Onsen! Onsen! Onsen!

We started today with an amazing breakfast. Scout, the owner of this hostel is truly an amazing cook. Yesterday evening we had this vegan soup, that was really good. (I even ate the mushrooms!) And this morning, we were surprised with delicious pancakes and egg thingies.

After breakfast, Scout drove us all back to the Nikko station, where we got on a bus to the Yumoto Onsen. By the way, the weather was much better today. I could actually see mountains now! We were asking ourselves whether those mountains were there yesterday as well.
Anyway, we went up to the mountain and got off somewhere in the middle to see a temple. Oh, you might have noticed I said "we". Yeah, we were all together! Way more fun that way. Though we got separated as two of the girls went on ahead and we never caught up. Why not? We got out at the wrong stop later.. We were supposed to get off only a few stops further, but instead, we went all the way up. 
And we were hungry! And we wanted to go to a hot spring! ("Onsen" in Japanse, remember?)
But everything was closed.. Well, almost anyway. We walked into every building we could and as neither of us was particularly good in Japanse, all we said was: "Onsen?", "Fudo?". The last one meaning "Food". We were desperate, but at one moment, someone said the following: 
Can you imagine how crazy people would think we are, doing this? Just think about it. You see someone running around in the UK, running into a supermarket.. yelling: "Swimming pool?"
Let that sink in for a second, and if you're not laughing like I was at that time, you probably have no sense of humor. Anyway, at one point, a woman did point us to food, but we could not find an onsen.. Eventually we arrived at the same place once more. And we asked the exact same question: Onsen?

Apparently... this woman owned this onsen. We actually were at a place with an onsen. Damnit. It was not a mixed onsen, so males and females had separate hot springs. Did I mind? Maybe. If you've read all the other stories I've written so far. Let me tell you, only one of the reasons would apply here. 
Anyway. One thing at this onsen was really weird for me. I was standing there, about to get into this water, this hot spring water. Outside. In the snow. And I wasn't cold. 

Oh and one more thing. Did you know the source of a hot spring smells like sulphur? When we got off this bus, the scent of sulphur was in the air. Apparently that was the source of the hot springs. Oh and this was at about 1500m above sea level!

I think it was this evening that got me thinking about writing stories. I didn't until later though. I also think this was the night I eventually gave in to the requests of singing. Mainly Stephanie had been asking me to sing ever since I told her I just recently started a band as a lead singer.
I think I prefer singing rock songs, but they sound awful if you don't have any instrumentals backing you up. So I sang White Light, by Granite State. It's an acoustic cover of a metal song. Really good one at that. You should check it out.
Anyway, they liked it! I even got an applause from an other room. Boost self-esteem: check.