short trip to OME(blue plum)

i was so sick and tired so i took a day off yesterday and went to ome, a very small town in western tokyo. my apartment is located on this street called "Ome Kaido", which directly goes to ome from here, so me and my sister (haha she is so nice!) took a bus to go there.
we woke up like 9 in the morning, get dressed, and jumped out from the apartment around 10 o'clock.
at the bus stop, we figured out the bus only comes once per an hour, and the next one isnt coming in 15 minutes. so wedecided to go to the post office to send my mail to the insurance company in the states. (ive been wanting to send this for a week but i didnt know how much stamps i should put and i didnt have time to go to the post office)
anyway then we came back to the bus stop and sat down on a bench waiting for the bus. then this old lady came up running, gasping so i offered her a spot. she refused, but then wedecided to schoot over so we all could sit down together. anyway she taught us the good onsen( hot spa) in ome, soon the bus came so we all rode on.
it took us 2 hours to get to ome, the city was too far and also the bus ran so slow. once we saw every body got off from the bus, since it passed so many train stations, but later lots of other people came in again, then the bus finally arrived the final destination ome bus tarminal.
we got a map from the officer there, and decided to walk back to ome station. on the way there, we found this very very old house which was built almost 400 years ago by a wealthy lumber dealer family.
the board outside the house said admission free, so we decided to take a look. after passing through a small gate, the house was a bit cold, and also a bit dark. when we were reading an explanation of the house history, two other people came in, and the house owner came out from somewhere. other 2 people immediately ran away but me and my sister kept reading it, then the owner told us we can enter their rooms... so we took off our shoes and entered. all the rooms were really neat, not decorative or anything, but i thought it was functional. the windows were easy to open, in here its so deadly humid in summer so in time we didnt have air conditioners we had to live with nature. also we used to our funerals in our own houses, (well somepeople still do now too) so the entrance and the window in the front side of the house had to be huge and could be dismantled.
anyway yesterday was really cold so the house was even colder. but the owner lady was really kind and told us the soba restaurant near the house is really popular and famous.
so then we decided to go there to have lunch. it was after 1pm already so the restaurant wasnt that crowded. there was one big group of obasan(middle aged mamas) and also one old lady by herself, and some other old grandpas. they seemed apparently annoyed by the show up of "young tourist outsiders" and they gave us a glance and kept eating. it was really silent, but the TV was on and there was a noisy lady and young noisy girl talking about something, so the restaurant barely had some noise.
anyway i ordered some udon cus i was sick and wanted to eat somethin simple. then my sister ordered "sobagaki", and we didnt know what it was. the waiter brought this weird looking ball floating in hot water with soy sauce..... my sister looked calm but i was like "what the hell!?" in my mind.
she chopped it into small piece and put it into the soy sauce and ate. she told me to try, so i did and it was actually really good!! our hometown is izumo, shimane, where you can see lots of soba restaurants. but it was the first time to try such a unique types of soba! was cool!!!

we walked towards the ome station, and remembered there was a "akatsuka fujio museum". he is a so popular mangaka(animation writer) back in '80, he is like a god for those sub culture generation kids. anyway the museum was made by just bunch of his works, but it was cool to see them all!!!!

it was already past 2pm when we left the museum, and finally got to the ome station. oh right in front of it there was a small wagashi (japanese sweet) shop so i bought a small kokuto-man (a sweets made by redbeans and flower and using the black sugar from okinawa) and also bought a can of hot green tea, and had them in the train. we took a train to go to mitake-mountain. there were so many elementary school kids on the same train, ome is countryside so kids have to take trains to go to school. (in my hometown its even worse, kids have to take a taxi to go to school! maybe its a good thing for them?)
so we got off of the train at mitake station and we were waiting for the bus to go to the mitake mountain. it was already 3:30pm and there was a guy standing at the stop. i thought "?? what is he doing?" he kinda reminded me those people who go to middle of nowhere by themselves to commit suiside, so i decided to be careful not to lose him, but there were 5 minutes until the next bus so me and my sister went to drive inn store to buy more manju.
we bought kibi manju (kibi is a kind of rice) and quickly came back to the bus stop. the fat young guy was still standing there so i was happy about that.
the bus came, and so many old grandma and granpas got off. instead me my sis and the fat guy rode in, then the bus started running. 10 minutes later the bus arrived to the mitake mountain, and right after that the young fat guy started running towards the cable car station of the mountain. we were going to the same way too, but the slope was just too steep so we couldnt speed up. when we finally climbed up the slope i was frightened how the cable car was expensive!! round trip of cable plus lift to go to the obserbatory was $16 per each!! what!! but it was too late to give up the mountain, so we decided to buy them.
the cable was so scary. i told my sister i wouldnt work there even though they give me a million dollars per year for the salary. its too risky, i can die by the shock. my sister also told me she has a fear of heights and we really regreted the decision of coming over here to pay thousands of dollars to go up the mountain.....
but the view was actually awesome! it was almost sunset so kinda dark, but all the mountain tree leaves were turning red, yellow, falling off, it was such a beautiful moment. on the way to the top i realized the young fat guy was a cable-ota.(cable car maniac) but i thought it was cool~
at the top of the mountain, oh my god it was freezing, but we were amazed there was a guy who was cultivating the field. yes he was making some vegetables all the way up there!! wow!!!! and there was some suvenier shop and restaurant. so there were some ppl living there! amazing!! on the way back we were a minute late for the cable car, so i decided to buy some postcards for my parents and grandparents. we were one of the last customers for that day, it was getting really dark, so the next one wasnt coming in 15 minutes, then the kind shop owner lady offered us some green tea, so we started talking about the ppl in the mountains. she said she was born there but grew up in kawasaki so didnt know really much about the history, but said there were people since heian-kamakura era, like almost 1000years ago. wow!

ahh i think this diary is very boring.. i wanna describe how ppl were very warm, kind and interesting but my poor english cant fully do that.

me and my sister then went to hot spa taking a JR train even deeper the mountains. there was only 2 people on the train. SCARY! i couldnt believe it was still in tokyo prefecture~~~~ no light, the sky was really dark, havent seen such a scene for a long time.... the hot spa was kinda far from the station, and it was dark so we were worried if we could really go the right way, but the onsen was very cool!!! my sister was washing her face with a shower and she wasnt thinking about people behind her taking a bath, her hot water from the shower was showering actually those people!! hahahahaha i really wanted to ignore her after she finished taking a shower.
they had a roten-buro (outside hot spa) so we went outside, it was SO freezing but the contrast of chilly air and the hot water actually worked well.
after that the reception person told us the next train will be coming 30 minutes later, so we had some cafe aulait, yuzu (citrus) ice cream and saka-manju(another red beans sweets). i love eating ice cream after the hot spa! it was very yummy!!!

we took the train to go back to ome station and we had another 10 minutes so bought shrimp fileo fish burger at mcdonald. it was okay.

took a bus all the way back to tanashi for 90 minutes!! there was almost no passengers. it was fun!!!

we didnt really search about the places and everything for this short day trip, since i dont like to do that so much. it always makes trip to just "make sure" what you read in the book before the trip. so we just asked the ppl on the bus and also the local ppl about the restaurants and everything, sometimes it turns out in a bad way, i end up finding nothing, but usually its surprising and fun!!