Sakakibara Onsen, Mie

On our way to a night’s stay at a nearby onsen (hot springs), we stop by a shrine. We went with the wife’s parents, and they were kind enough to treat us and drive us (about 1 hour).

Tsubaki Grand Shrine

The Tsubaki Grand Shrine has well over a thousand years of history at the site, and is quite the peaceful setting nestled in the lower part of the mountains. We saw a number of new cars parked in front of one of the shrines there, and this is a place where you can get your car blessed with good luck.

The shrines were not huge, but I found the orange lanterns and gates very distinctive and worthy of mention. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, but there was a tiny little waterfall that you can ask for wishes to come true. Might as well make one more for a place to live soon!

On our way out, we noticed some Kyudo practice being displayed. I don’t think I was helping much by staring through my camera, since the guy here missed his target, twice! However, his buddy did hit the mark while we watched, which was pretty impressive at about 30+ meters.

Travel Stimulus

Some of the Japanese prefectures were running a promotion to stimulate their travel industry during Covid. I believe the logic goes that since hotels and restaurants are struggling, people will leave the safety of their homes (ironic?) and come travel to help the local businesses. You have to be a resident, and we qualify even though we’ve never paid taxes, so we thank the many tax payers! Not every prefecture is participating, and each have different amounts/rules. However in Mie, we each get 5000 yen (~$40 USD) per person discounted for any hotel with proof of vaccination and resident. Our stay was about 20000yen (~$150 USD) a person including dinner/breakfast, so we saved 25%! Kid’s stay was about half, so she saved 50%! There are no limits for the number of stays, so we’ll do some more traveling while the promotion lasts.

Sakakibara Onsen

The Sakakibara Onsen Ryokan (Japanese site) (hot springs hotel) had the usual traditional Japanese style room with tatami. It had pretty low occupancy on the weekday we stayed, so I was quite surprised when I went down to the onsen (hot springs bath) and there was a crowd. Normally a bath is a peaceful occasion, but it did get a bit awkward sitting in a bath with a herd of naked dudes shoulder to shoulder. So the town locals can buy annual passes to use the onsen, and if they are retired, they probably come every day… and chill for hours!

The distinctive part of this onsen, was that the water was quite alkaline and a solid hint of sulfur. One of the bath’s temperature was luke warm, which meant you could sit in there for a long period. And the locals probably spent all afternoon in there. The water felt very slippery, like soap, so you had to be careful walking around on the rocks outdoors. I came back in the morning, and the baths were practically empty. This was the peace I wanted! The locals probably come in the afternoons.

Dinner

We opted for the kaiseki (multi-course set menu) dinner and this was served with seasonal vegetables, sashimi, meat, fresh tofu and a mixed rice (with corn). The food was excellent, we stuffed ourselves to the last course, but I think the highlight was the mixed seasonal vegetable steamed dish made with onsen water. I would hope the onsen water that the locals haven’t sat in:).

I mean all the fancy sashimi and grilled steak were good too, plus they made fresh tofu at the table. The final steamed rice dish was mixed with corn and was a great way to finish, they even gave us onigiri (rice balls) to take back to the room for later. I would say the kaiseki was tame in term of ingredients, but they did serve chrysanthemum petals which I think I had for the first time. All in all it’s hard to do looong dinners with our daughter still, but she did like the steak and they gave her some french fries and udon as part of her kids dinner.

One more thing

So the vacation stimulus didn’t end there. They also gave us 2000 yen ($15 USD) gift cards to use at the local stores, per person. We ended up using it all at the hotel gift store to buy snacks and a nice bottle of local sake. I found it interesting that government stimulus like this in the USA would never fly, for a number of reasons. But with the borders still relatively closed and Covid affecting travel, I can understand the need for helping some businesses that wouldn’t survive. We do see quite a few closed down hotels and restaurants, and Covid is constantly in the news still. We will try to take a couple more local trips while it lasts!