Good morning everyone, it's Tuesday, December 29th and it's time for Amber's morning English talk.

Today is sort of a continuation of yesterday's morning talk, because I had talked about the snow in Yuzawa, but not really what we ended up doing once we arrived.

We arrived in Yuzawa around 10:30 am, and found ourselves walking around the main town area, just exploring the snowy streets.

Yuzawa is very much a ski and snowboard town, but it is also known for its rice, soba, and onsens. And today I'd like to take my listeners on a mini trip to Yuzawa.

The first thing we did upon arrival, other than play around with the snow and ice around us, was stop at Sobadokoro Shinbashi, a soba restaurant that sits right outside of Yuzawa Kogen Ski Resort, or about an 8 minute walk from Echigo-Yuzawa Station. The shop offers hand-made soba noodles, as well as udon, and various fish dishes. I ended up ordering udon because it was still early in the day, and I really like Udon as a kind of breakfast, but hiro-san and sone-chan both ordered different kinds of soba. Sansai soba, and I believe hegi-soba as sone-chan's arrived on a large wooden dish known as a hegi.

After eating, we once again travelled the town on foot, though it felt like the town was mostly empty, as most people were out on the slopes skiing or snowboarding. After purchasing a few omiyage from a sake shop, we hopped back in our car and drove up to Minami-uonuma in search of koshi-hikari rice at a local JA farmers market. Hiro and I ended up finding a 3kilogram bag which was perfect for us as we had recently bought a few kilograms of rice a week before.

After all of our shopping was finished, we decided to visit an onsen to unwind from all the walking, playing, and shopping. Yuzawa has quite a few natural onsens, and a large number of hotels and inns in the area have hot springs included in their buildings. However, because we went on a day trip to Yuzawa, we were on a search for higaeri-onsen or hot springs that you could enter just for the purpose of taking a bath. With a lot of searching, we finally settled on a local hotspring called "Kaido no yu" or "Kaido hot spring." It's not anything like a super sento or large spa-style onsen, but it has two lovely baths, one indoor and one out. This hot spring has simple alkaline waters which is almost like a natural soap for the skin, and it was so much fun going to the outdoor bath in the snowy weather!

Kaido no Yu is located near the Kagura Ski resort and it's frequented by those that go skiing or snowboarding there, but when we went, it was surprisingly quiet, at least for the women's side, which had at most 3 people including myself. The men's side definitely had quite a few more people, as I could hear them talking from the women's bath. So, depending on when you go, you may be lucky to avoid a crowd. We arrived at this hot spring around 3:00pm to try and avoid any rush that may occur in the evening from skiers and snowboarders.

Overall, Yuzawa was a really lovely place, and I was surprised that it was so close to Tokyo, despite being in Niigata. By car it took us only a little over two hours to travel to, though the traffic was perfect on our way there and back, without any traffic jams to slow us down. I'd definitely like to go back some day for snowboarding or perhaps an overnight stay! There were so many different ski resorts in the area, it's definitely worth checking out if you love winter sports.

So today I’d like to wrap up today’s morning talk with a question: What do you like to do in the snowy weather?