SPRING BREAK!!!!!!!

Finally!!!!! We needed a holiday, so we went to a hotspring resort in the mountains in Northern Akita. We had a blast finding an outdoor hotspring located on a river, which was vacant, so they let Hideto and I go in together while Noi was napping in the car. We also stopped at a park with a great children's playground and a cherry blossom festival. Noi rode her new PINK bike and we also went to a bear farm. These bears are Japanese bears. The would stand up and clap to say they wanted food. I'd never seen anything like it. Noi could touch a baby bear and they had a grizzly bear. There are grizzly bears in Hokkaido. This was the first time for me to see one. I worked in Yellowstone Nat'l Park one summer while in college and HIKED all summer, and luckily never met one. This one creeped me out. We threw it some of the food for the Japanese bears and it didn't even move. It just stared at us like, "I'm waiting for you to fall so I can eat you." The food at the resort was incredible. Total deal - 3 meals per day, mainly locally grown organic food, plus the room and hotsprings for $100 per person and Noi was free. In CA that price would get you a shitty sleazy hotel room in the Tenderloin with shit on the sidewalk in front of the door. Yeah, we miss SF- hahahaha....On this trip, I discovered I love whole milk! Well, Akita milk. It's soooooo good! And the fresh ice cream, we were loving it. One night we had a stew made with horse meat. We didn't know it was horse meat, we had no idea what kind of meat, Hideto wondered if it was bear meat, so we asked, and it was horse meat. I hate to say it, but it was GOOD!!!!!!! We also had fresh mountain vegetables, which are really a specialty of Akita. If you live in Tokyo, you can't have this food. And it was funny when we went to Tokyo, all the restaurants in Tokyo Mid-town Tower had signs that read "Our produce from Akita" and it was really pricey.....We saw a lot of birds, including two beautiful cranes, 3 woodpeckers, and other types as well, took a lovely nature hike, I had a great massage- one hour for $40! In SF, $100. Yeah, I'm loving it.........