travelling cupcakes: November happenings (2)

One of the highlights of this month was the 2-day "study" trip to 白浜 (Shirahama) in 和歌山県 (Wakayama prefecture). The university organised and subsidised it so we only had to pay 4,000yen per person for the transportation, accommodation, dinner and breakfast. The trip wasn't compulsory but most people signed up for it so off we went in 3 coaches.

Coach journeys and school trips always lead to party bus scenarios, but that didn't happen this time. Maybe because we've grown up? or perhaps we were just saving the energy to party at night (and too tired to talk the next day)...

We went to visit a few museums which were (predictably) very uninteresting. 千畳敷（せんじょうじき）was pretty amazing though - it's a sea-side cliff looking out to the Pacific Ocean. It was quite windy when we got there but still we had a great time posing for photos.

We spent the night at 三楽荘 - a hotel with Japanese-style rooms and baths! Basically as soon as we got to our rooms, we changed into the yukata provided by the hotel and quickly went down to the bath, stripped and submerged ourselves into the huge bath. The men and women swap baths at 0130 in the middle of the night so we stayed up till then to try the other bath. The original women's bath (until 0130) was huge and had baths of different temperatures, whilst the men's was pretty unimpressive with just two baths (we were kinda disappointed). Anyway the rooms were very comfy. I shared a room with Naomi, Luciana and Larisa, and we were joined by Morgan 'cause there was some coupling (hence making out) on her futon... yes we slept on thick comfy futon. It was rather pleasing :) And oh I forgot to mention the wonderful dinner, we assembled in a huge room where there were tiny tables lined up, (almost) everyone was in their yukata and we sat down and had dinner served to the table. There was a great range of vegetables and sashimi, and we had unlimited supply of beer and karaoke! Some of us weren't embarrassed at all to the extent that the guys volunteered to go on stage first to sing Backstreet Boys!