I chatted with my parents first thing in the morning. It was only about 6 C in the room so I grabbed my phone real quickly. I did get up at some point to finally switch the heat on. It was flurrying a tiny bit outside. We packed up everything into the car, and headed off on foot to the second onsen we wanted to try, sai-no-kawara, open air bath. This one was about 20 minutes away. You walk through the Sainokawara Park to get there. Water is streaming through the ground, creating little ponds and rivulets of hot water. The fog was intense. Absolutely stunning.

The baths were pretty crowded in the small changing area, but the main pool can hold so many people! This one felt much hotter than yesterday’s. Probably because it’s outdoors and the air was cold. We rinsed off really fast. We walked back through the town and tried a onsen manju sample. I also bought an onsen egg, which are eggs boiled in the source water. We stopped by a glass factory too - such beautiful little figurines! On the way out of Kusatsu, we got gas before I dropped A back at the station to catch her train at 1 pm. The drive back was less hilly, google took me a different route. Managed to get home in the afternoon and go grocery shopping.