Birthday at Yunessun

I am officially in my mid to late 20's now. On September 1st, I turned 26. YES, 26. I can say that things have just been getting better though. Truly! I really think that this is the very last birthday that anything significant happens. I am now able to rent a car in the United States without a co-signer. My mother, who knows that I've been in 3 very bad car accidents (all of which were at least 50% my fault according to the insurance agency), is shaking in her boots!

This birthday was also good for another reason. I must have been a REALLY good girl this year because Mike decided to buy me an iPod Nano and take us all up to Yunessun Spa Resort in Hakone (near Mt. Fuji).

I'm very excited about the Nano. From my previouse posts, I've mentioned my newfound admiration of running. We already had the big 60GB iPod that I got Mike for Christmas. However, I've been hogging it on my jogs ever since. Josh has also learned to love it and he asks to listen to Laurie Berkner or TMBG in the car. So, instead of it being Mike's iPod, it is now the family iPod. That is until I received my Nano. It's freed up the biggy iPod for Mike to listen to on the train and during his gym days. Everyone's happy.

As for Yunessun, I didn't really know what to expect. I had seen the pictures and it looked more like an American style waterpark. Sort of the Japanese Disneyland of bath houses. It turned out to be a great resort for all of us. We ended up taking an ITT (aka: Navy base) bus tour up to the park. Upon arrival we are given a towel, a robe and a bracelet shaped like a swatch watch. It is very important to wear the bracelet at all times because it's used to pay for your food, drinks, and services. One side of the park is designated more for young children while the other is a more adult section. Children are allowed in all the areas; it's just that the adult-type area had hotter baths. Obviously we spent most of our time in the children's area.

Outdoors in the more juvenile "fun" area, they had a wading pool with a slide and lots of different fountains. They also had several water slides for older children (110 cm or taller) and a grotto type pool complete with waterfall and hidden pool. Indoors, they had a "blue" pool with blue scented water & a yellow colored curry spice pool along with several Mediterranean style pools complete with a Dead Sea Bath which was filled with salt imported from the Dead Sea. They also had a pool with little fish that ate off dead skin cells... weird. Unfortunately that was the only pool that I didn't try because of the long wait and limited time slots.

Next we went to the more adult area, where they all different types of pools, a red wine bath, a green tea bath, a coffee bath, and a sake bath. We tried all of them. However, we ended up back in the kiddy pool. We completed the whole ten hours without a single temper tantrum. Better than Disneyland in terms of Josh's meltdown mode. In typical Josh fashion, he would not fall asleep on the bus. He finally caved 5 minutes before we reached home. The bus ride was long (3 hours there and 3 hours back from Yokosuka) but I think as long as parents are armed with playthings it's manageable. We came home at around 8:30PM completely relaxed and tired. Josh couldn't stop talking about it the whole next day.

We brought a cheapy waterproof camera, so we had to play it the old fashioned way and wait to see our pictures. But we finally got them developed so check them out in the Gallery, dated 09/07/2006.

In creating this post, I totally trumped Mike's attempt below to get us more readers. Please read the below post. He's created a nifty little button to use us as a link your blog if you'd like. Thanks!