Onsens

This morning dawned rainy and, for all intents and purposes, way too early. I was supposed to be up at 7:15 so I could be on the subway train at 8, to meet my coworker and friend Miyaka and her boyfriend Itsushi at 8:30 at Jyoshin station. Unfortunately, I woke up at 7:50 instead; good thing I'd prepared most things the night before.

----I must interrupt this post to tell you that, while I had started with good intentions of a slightly humourous, interesting tale of gallivanting through the Japanese countryside, I just - about ten minutes ago - heard a clattering, scratching noise against my glass sliding door (three times, even), and immediately assumed there was a mukage on the inside, hungering for my blood. After a paranoid phone call to a friend and lots of pens and other objects thrown at my curtains to make sure nothing was hiding there, I've ascertained that it was probably a cicada futzing around on my balcony, nothing more, but I'm still jumping at every single small noise and looking nervously around the room, and I probably will be for several more hours, so this post may come out slightly more disjointed than I'd meant. This is turning into a rather crippling phobia that I need to get rid of. Okay, back to the story.




I made it to the rendezvous about seven minutes late, but intact and not really that rushed at all, so there you have it. It was pouring rain, though; apparently we're getting some of the effects of a typhoon that's coming up from Okinawa, so our hour-long drive to somewhere in the mountains outside Nagoya was all rain. This was, actually, really cool: the forest was so green and there was water spilling down the various mountain faces* we passed, and it was all very British Columbia-in-the-rain. I identified bamboo forests and cedar forests, but the rest of the foliage wasn't anything familiar, for all it was totally spectacular.

The place we went to was deserted except for the staff and ourselves; the river was full to bursting and it was still pouring rain. We caught fish by standing on a platform in the middle of the river; the fish were released into the river and then swept up on to the platform by the current, and all we had to do was pick up the fish and stick them in the bucket. Super-skillful! We ate the fish not ten minutes later, roasted on sticks and dipped in salt, and they were amazing.

It was still pouring rain when we left, although the clouds were starting to come down off the mountains and so it was getting more humid - really beautiful to see, though! I slept a bit on the way to Toyota City, gotta say. In Toyota City, we went to an onsen - public baths. This one was super-nice, with different pools with different types of water for your skin, and all kinds of fun stuff. Also, yes, before you ask, this was the nude part of the day. Men and women are segregated, but there's nothing else remotely private about it, and it took me about 5 seconds to get over everyone around me being naked, and 15 seconds to get over being naked around everyone else. It was probably the most relaxing thing ever, and I really think that it needs to catch on in Canada - no wonder the Japanese are so friendly and happy to go out of their way to help you all the time, if they get to go to onsens regularly. Pretty sure I'd be incredibly mellow if I could go to an onsen every weekend.

Anyway, after an hour and a half of sitting in various pools of heated water with bubbles, heated water with jets, personal barrels of heated water, and heated seats where warm water flows constantly down the back (these last two were outside, and it was raining, and it was... I don't think English really has a word for it. "Romantic" has the wrong connotations and "poetic" evokes entirely the wrong sort of pretensions. Maybe I could write a haiku about it? Argh, language.), we then decided to go for food. We drove for an hour to the shabu-shabu** restaurant, only to find it closed: never fear, a Jusco*** was near! So we went there and there was a shabu-shabu place, and stuffed ourselves full.

Overall, a satisfying day. And hey, I made some excellent banana bread, to top it all off. Life was pretty good today, until I got the above reminder of why I probably never will truly be at ease in this country. Sigh. Miyaka's offered to give me Japanese one-on-one lessons, though, which is an offer I will definitely take her up on. I am so very tired of burdening people with my foreign incomprehension.


*They do a sensible thing here, I think, to prevent erosion from slaughtering commuters and day-trippers; they pour concrete down the side of particularly steep slopes, leaving smaller holes and sometimes squares open for foliage to grow and thus anchor the soil more.

**You get a pot of simmering water, veggies, and very thinly-sliced meat. Apply foodstuffs to water, take out of water when cooked, dip in delicious dipping sauce and enjoy with rice, marinated eggplant, tofu cakes, and other assortment of delicious (and healthy) foodstuffs. Named because of the sound it makes when cooking, apparently - I didn't hear much.

***Like WalMart, only better and less evil and with about 23 other stores inside it, plus a decent grocery section.