The First Onsen Dinner.

  So, after showering off and cleaning up from my Onsen experience, I headed down to the dining room and met my companions.

My experiences with food had been challenged by Tokyo. . . but the chef in this little hotel on the side of a Japanese Volcano was about to rewrite the book.

I can't really describe Japanese cooking well, I don't think.  I don't know many of the terms, and I honestly don't know exactly what most of what we ate was.

But it was delicious.  The flavor choices were super-intentional, with sauces that combined with dishes in startling, sometimes awe-inspiring ways.  Often throughout the new three days my compnaions and I would take a bit of something, and have to stop, marvel, and then talk at length about how the flavors worked together.  The service was attentive, with plenty of care taken to how the plating was presented and the delivery of new courses in elegant, unobtrusive ways.

The pictures I took will never do those meals justice, but I hope that the incredible diversity is conveyed by them.

Side note: I am quite sure I forgot at least one (if not two!) whole courses in almost every one of these series, I'm sorry you won't get to see pictures of everything.