Another aside: I like cities, and so Osaka was a deliberate choice on my part. Cities can be inherently problematic for solo women travellers, however: nightlife, bars, etc. Safe options include the cinema, concerts (especially traditional or classical music, pub crawl type tours, and dancing. Not clubbing, mind you, but dancing. Dance enthusiasts can be found just about anywhere these days, and styles include ballroom, swing, country western, and various flavors of folk dancing. The dances are typically sponsored by a social club and newcomers are welcome. The evening often starts with a lesson.

I'd looked into swing dancing in Osaka, and there was a dance. Unfortunately I put the wrong date on my calendar. Oh well.

Jan 6, cont: Forget to go swing dancing (damnit), go to Daimaru (fancy old school depato) for chirashi sushi bento (marked down) and tangerines and snow peas. They wrap and tape everything and include a litle cold pack in the sushi bag (in case I'm leaving for the tropics, I suppose). 

Onsen not nearly so posh (though cool in an all-wood sort of way) and water not very hot. So I scrub and shower and wash hair and so forth as usual, but only soak for a brief time before putting on my jammies. I do have the scary blue bathroom upstairs, but I'm not sure I want to soak there. Plus the toiletries in the common bath are very nice and I don't get my bathroom all steamy and messy.

Jan 7: Breakfast also not posh: green salad, bread basket (which I skip the first day), yogurt, juice, soup (from thermos, with mini croutons to stir in), hot beverages

Bathe in onsen, subway to Osaka Castle. Visit Peace Museum, castle (with audio guide at no charge).  Walk a lot, regroup in afternoon, head back out to Dotonbori and market street (picking up extra nice nigiri bento---lots of cool roes). Street scene just amazingly busy and crowded. Drivers routinely run red lights. Osakans keep to the right. Fall asleep early. 

Jan 8:  Breakfast the same. We eat in a room furnished with rustic furniture, like the onsen, all watching a large TV featuring the usual silliness. Large central table. Sort of like summer camp, particularly as we're mostly still all wearing our comfy regulation jammies.

I am the only westerner, and several people chat me up, including a couple who work in the U.S. The wife finds it cool that I prefer the Japanese common baths to the western style en suite option.

Onsen, then pack and check out. 

Jan 8, cont: Subway to Shin-Osaka, Shinkansen to Himeji. Himeji tidy, with broad avenue leading to castle. Very nice, glad I wore two sets of stockings with my dress (slippers available but awkward on very steep stairs) and floors would otherwise have been very chilly. It's nice to swish around this big castle's wooden floors in stocking feet: you sort of feel like you're at home.  

Forgot to mention that I'd stowed my luggage in a locker at the train station in Himeji while I visited the castle.

Much is made of the luggage transportation services in Japan, and certainly they would be handy if I were moving house or for some reason needed to bring along a wedding dress or ski equipment or similar. For every day travel, though, I can't quite see the point: another thing to plan for, another thing to pay for.

Jan 8, cont: Long-ish wait for train at Himeji---poor planning on my part. Sit on platform and watch Nozomi scream by. I'm alone except for station staff. I happen to a mild fascination with trains, so this ends up being an unexpected bonus for me.

Hikari to Hiroshima packed. Sit next to sleeping Japanese business guy who eventually wakes and attempts to chat me up, in spite of my wearing ear plugs (due to irritating American toddler travelling with his overwhelmed parents) and my obvious failure to understand a word that he is saying. He finally scrapes together a few words of English and we chat a bit.  It's much easier for him to listen to English than to speak, and I've got nearly zero Japanese apart from greetings and vocabulary. 

Jan 8, cont: Originally I'd planned on visiting Hiroshima that afternoon but it's getting late and I'd timed my ferry ride to Miyajima to coincide with high tide so that the famous red torii will appear to be floating.

So instead I transfer to local JR to Miyajima-guchi and then to JR ferry to island. Check into Kinsui Villas where desk clerk manages mostly by pointing to the English language information sheet. It is, of course, much easier for my to read the instructions, but he is very nice. 

Kinsui Villa is a sister property to the upmarket Kinsuikan. It's located right across the street from the ferry landing. My room is a very narrow loft style, all recently remodeled and very nice, with an enormous window looking out onto the adjacent forest. Green tea with bean paste-stuffed maple leaf sweet in the room, and complimentary drink and senbei at the cafe downstairs, and a coupon for a memento of some sort to be picked up at Kinsuikan gift shop---all very organized. I pick out my yukata and book dinner (in the dining room).

Jan 8, cont: A walk along the waterfront to see the shrine illuminated before dinner and then to the restaurant, where I've booked for 7:00. Waiter thoroughly rattled at the prospect of explaining dinner to me. I don't really need any thing explained (ask for the fire under the skillet to be lit five minutes before I want to eat its contents, etc.) but he's worried that I don't understand. He gets another guy to explain it and I tell him what I think I'm supposed to do and he agrees.

Dinner is excellent (and an enormous amount if food) but experience somewhat marred by large family with very cranky baby and short-tempered mother and whiny school-age siblings. Father of almost zero help, so I can see why Mom is short-tempered. Family finally leaves, only to be replaced by loud drunk couples.

More walking after dinner. It's now very, very quiet and it feels like I'm the only visitor.

My room has a toilet and sink (what we'd call a powder room in the U.S.) but no bath or shower. The common bath is nice, and features views over the water. I sleepvery soundly in my cozy loft bed).  

This is where my notes stop, so there will be a brief intermission while I try to piece together the next few days. Feel free to comment, ask questions, etc.

Hope your recovery is going well!

I was lucky with vacation when I was working - I eventually got 25 days plus 12 public holidays. The situation's much better in Europe, though. I'm really enjoying this - sooner you than me with all that snow! I do have a couple of questions.

You mentioned "Wear loose-fitting clothes" for dinner in the minshuku at Shirawakago - I thought you were usually supplied with a yukata - is that just ryokans? What was wrong with the bath?

Did the Dormy Inn in Kanazawa have an en-suite bathroom?

A propos of nothing: Ryokans (esp of the type Therese seems to have stayed in in Takayama) pull me in both directions. I really enjoy the Japanese rooms -- I find them amazingly serene and welcoming. But the in-room dining is a deal-breaker for me, cause I never know if there will be a place in the room where I can eat while sitting in a proper chair. I've reached the point where I'm too old & fat to comfortably sit on the floor, even with the legless chair seats that you find.

Dinner was served early at the minshuku, and I hadn't changed into my yukata. In any case it wasn't really cozy enough to make me want to change at that point. No central heat.

And no central heat in the bathing "suite" either, so unless you're soaking in the tub or running hot water over yourself from the hand shower, you're mostly not too interested in lingering. This is very different from a large public bath (sento) or onsen, where it's all pretty warm and cozy.

I stayed in a normal Japanese studio apartment in Tokyo a couple years ago, also in January, and the only effective means of heating the bathroom was to fill the tub. Otherwise it was a cold, wet tomb.

It's no accident that heated toilet seats are so popular in Japan.

The Kanazawa Dormy Inn has en suite bathrooms. Mine featured a shower, but I never bothered to use it.

The dining area in the minshuku in Shirakawa-go was the central room of the house and all the guests eat together at a table that wraps around a sort of fire pit in the middle of the room. You can't stretch your feet out in front of you (as they'd then be in the fire pit), so you alternate between sitting on your haunches, cross-legged, or a bit sideways. Or I suppose you could just stretch out lengthwise once dinner was over and the evening had moved on to telling funny stories and drinking beer.

As rizzuto says, it's very convivial but not always comfortable. I'd practiced sitting in the positions quite a bit before the trip, and that helped.

Oh, and you'll get a yukata or some sort of pajamas pretty much everywhere you stay in Japan, including bare bones business hotels. You also get much more complete toiletry kits: razor, toothbrush, toothpaste, comb. It's perfectly acceptable to roam the hotel in your pjs, popping put to do a load of laundry, buying beer from a vending machine, whatever.

"I'd practiced sitting in the positions quite a bit before the trip, and that helped." - I've started doing that. I think it's going to take a <i>lot</i> of practice.... [creak]

While you're at it you should practice getting up and down from a kneeling position, and standing on one foot (while getting shoes on and off). Slip ons and zip closures much, much preferable to lace up shoes. All very good "core strengthening" exercises.

Jan 9: Breakfast is in the dining room. My waiter this morning is 93 if he's a day and clearly petrified of the experience that awaits. I'm shown to my table, where a lovely assortment of dishes is laid out, including some items that I'll be cooking (including a nice broth with teeny tiny clams in it). Just about the time I'm looking around for the rice he approaches and offers me a choice between "something something shiro something" and "something something something something something". Now I know that shiro means white, and if I'd not been trying to figure out what the second option was I'd probably have caught "gohan", which is rice. The other option is a sort of wild rice with twigs mixed in. I'd had it the night before, but definitely prefer white rice for breakfast. It took us all a great deal longer to get the rice question sorted than it should have, particularly as it would have been very easy to simply show me the rice cookers in the front of the room.

Breakfast was almost as much food as dinner, and featured plenty of fish and vegetables. A western breakfast is also offered.

Onsen and packing after breakfast and leave my bag with the front desk. I visit the main shrine (now very busy) and end up doing quite a lot of walking in parks and visiting a very interesting Buddhist temple. It was surprisingly easy to get away from crowds.

By now it's early afternoon, so I retrieve my bag and take the ferry back to the mainland. In the end I don't visit Hiroshima at all.