Friday, January 4, 2013

my Atami tour

--> Last year, 2012, Dec.25th~26th the ysep program took us to the city of Atami, which is famous for the hot spring as well as the beautiful scenery.

We lived in a hotel located in a valley, and from the window of our room, we can enjoy a brilliant view of the sea. It was a Japanese kind of room, with tatami covering the ground. The door was made of paper and had wood frame. Four of us shared the room, but still, it feels big enough.

We enjoyed the hot spring there as soon as we arrived at the hotel. From the outdoor hot spring pool, we appreciated the setting sun and the Atami city with light turned on gradually. Usually, no one should be in the hot spring pool for more than 15min at a stretch. But I felt I could be in the hot spring pool for longer since it was a outdoor one. The chill breeze together with the hot spring, made I feel like tasting ice cream together with hot pudding.
 
Atami is a small city and most of the residences are the old. According the mayor, a lot of them moved there after their retirement. All these make Atami a city of slow rhythm, very different from other modern cities. However, at the same time, the city makes me think of the movie Inception. Atami is very much like the city made up in dream, elegant, beautiful, relaxing, well-built, but seems to be lacking the vigour of youth. A lot of houses are unused, and even during the Christmas time, there were very few people on the street, and the young are extremely rare.

Atami is a city both charming and sentimental. It is dilemmatic since I both hope the city can be lively and relaxing at the same time. But whatever, hard work is worth to keep the lovely small city, Atami enjoying a better future.

view from the hotel

hot spring for cooking eggs

near the beach