totsukawa-osaka

On our last day in Totsukawa and the last day of 2015, we started with a big Japanese breakfast...chagayu, TKG (tamago kake gohan), yudofu as well as other delicious dishes.

After breakfast, we had some time before the bus took us back, so we checked out the Sarukaibashi, another suspension bridge, which is 131 meters (143 yards) long and 34 meters high (111 feet), this was was the sturdiest of the ones we tried. (can you see Satoshi?!)

We had some time for coffee made with hot spring water.

The homes and hotels in this area have non-stop running hot spring water, so many homes use it to cook with.

This area was hit by a flood in the 1800s which spurred some of the villagers to relocate to Hokkaido.

Nowadays, there is a area called "Shin-Totsukawa" (literally new Totsukawa) in Hokkaido.

Recently the Totsukawa area in Nara was again hit with a flood, if I'm not mistaken this was about 4 years ago.

This photo shows how far the roadway is from some of the housing but also how close the rivers are to some of the housing.

We had a longer break time at the Tanise suspension bridge, so we "walked" across. (this was the view from the other side)

This was super scary! Probably because we were up so high. Probably because the boards under our feet lifted quite often. Probably because there were at least 10 of us crossing in either direction. And probably because it was krazy windy!

I think we are done with suspension bridges for now...

One thing we tried was Roppoyaki. This one was made by Fukuyarikyu in Totsukawa.

It is like a cake type manju...delicious, but not different from most sweets with sweet bean paste in them.

And at our last "pit stop" we picked up some kaki no ha sushi (sushi that is wrapped in persimmon leaves). This is a well-known item of this area.

The version we picked up had saba (mackerel), sanma (saury), tai (snapper), shrimp and salmon.

We had this for dinner with some toshikoshi soba.

We hope you enjoyed this adventure as much as we did.