watch the sunset from the comfort of an outdoor onsen

It wasn’t just a sunset, oh no. It was a glorious sunset, with shimmering lotus flower pastels falling softly against the mountainside and lighting all the snow to pink and peach, and the sky above was thick with distant blue, and the vapour was rising from the onsen pool, and you could smell the resin from the pine trees, and all that space leading up to the mountain was painted with nothing but snow and gleams of ice, and one by one their lights went out as the sun slid slowly down, and I sunk my head beneath the yellow-mineralled water, and when I came out there was a different, Arabian sky, and the stars were very big.

Mission complete.

next week for Christmas with T, the coastline, gale force winds and assorted guests at parties.
I feel a bit bad for not spending closer to home with closer to home “M, I can’t believe you’re not spending Christmas closer to home with us!” people, but at the end of the day I’m not paid to babysit them just because they are less than comfortable in their own company. Why is the socialiser’s need for company always more important than the loner’s need for space?? Why should I feel guilty about not wanting to spend my every waking minute with them?
Also, I think it’s time to be honest that I simply don’t like A and the world would be a better place if she spontaneously combusted.
Shit, did I write that?
I mean, if I minimised time spent with her. Lest I combust.

So I’m hoping that as well as being free of certain toxic “bodies” and unwelcome intrusions on my personal space (how is it I can spend day after day with T and never feel intruding or intruded upon, whereas anything more than a few hours with other, ahem, folk leaves me with an almost discernable twitch above my right eye??), this will also be a Christmas of onsening. Maybe even sunset onsening. T’s such a sweetheart I’m sure he’d be delighted to drive me wherever I wanted to coincide with the solar calendar.
Live in hope, friends, live in hope!

1. Find suitable outdoor onsen. In mountains near Biei?
2. Find person with car to drive me there. Daichi? Though this would necessitate mixed onsen, which are fewer and further between.
3. Drive to said onsen before sunset hour approaches.
4. Enter onsen.
5. Leave onsen once night has fallen upon me. Try not to faint upon standing up. Those rocks are not soft on the hips.
6. Store experience in memory and call upon it again in times of stress and dire lethargy.
7. Repeat steps 1 – 6 at appropriate intervals.