It’s a New Year! Huzzah! How was your new year? We had all sorts of yummy food. Traditionally, all shops are closed on the first of January, so they make enough food to last for a few days!
Anyway, the comic is a few days behind real life. The onsen was pretty cool, despite the nudity. There is a ticket machine where you put your money in, and it spits out an admission ticket. This is given to a bored Japanese man. I was confused why we had to buy a ticket and then give it to the bored Japanese man. Why didn’t we just give him the money? But apparently, this is how a lot of things work here. (We did the same with some ice cream place in the airport).
The onsen has two different areas, one for men and one for women. I obviously went to the men’s side because I’m not a pervert. Our locker room lead downstairs to a steamy area where the wall was lined with taps, shower heads on hoses, and white plastic seats. We sat on the plastic seat and vigorously bathed ourselves. Unlike the pools in North America, where they suggest we take a shower before bathing and no one does, this is actual bath time for a lot of people in Japan.
So I soaped myself down and washed myself with the shower hose. After this, we went into the hot spring itself. There was one on the inside and one on the outside. The inside one was quite hot, and what’s the point of hot springs if you can’t be outside so we moved there. We could hear the girls on the other side of the fence, and Steve was tempted to throw snowballs, however, there are signs forbidding such action.
It was a relaxing night, and honestly no different than naked hot tubs in the men’s locker room, but I don’t really like those either.
Happy New Year!
Yes. The onsen. The public bath.
Sorry this was late. We were celebrating New Year’s Eve dinner! It was great! I hope you all have a great time tonight!
These are my two nieces who live in Japan. They grew up with Ekko and Zoe and then moved away and it was a tearful event for everyone involved.
You may not understand what Emma is saying, (the shortest one), but that’s ok. No one understands the random phrases that come from her mouth. We blame YouTube for that.
Anyway, to continue from where we left off, we had to take a third train after the super crowded one. It wasn’t crowded though, and we rolled into Nisako, our final destination, around 10pm. We were exhausted, but were very happy!
After we missed the second train, we waited another hour or so for the next train. We were very fortunate, for the door stopped right in front of us. People had to get off while the masses were trying to push in.
At one point, Ekko yelled, “OFF!”
This startled them enough that people were able to get off the train and my family crowded in. Now, I was at the end, and my hand was holding onto this large suitcase. This old woman was trying to get off and also trying to climb over my suitcase. People were pushing me from behind, but I wouldn’t let go of the suitcase. So we were at a bit of a stand still as the old woman couldn’t get through since she was stuck on my suitcase, and I couldn’t get on because she was stuck on my suitcase. Eventually, we made it through.
While we were waiting for the train to depart, we did hear one woman screaming “Anna! Anna!” Apparently, she and her twelve year old daughter got separated: the mom was on the train, and the daughter was off. She screamed her name for a long while until someone probably relented and let her on. It was pretty chaotic!
At this time, my phone was dead. My bag was also at the back of the train so I couldn’t grab my book. It was a long, one hour, train ride.
The first train trip took about 300 minutes. We then needed to take a second train for our second leg of the trip. Unfortunately, we couldn’t make it onto the first one. It was packed.
We had to move to a different platform for our second chance of boarding a train. It was pretty cold out, we had changed into winter clothes by now. And after about forty minutes, the train arrived.
They people crowded into an already crowded train. There was no orderly queue to enter the train; it was frantic rush lasting for a few feet resulting in a morass of people shoving and pushing to no avail.
My phone had run out so I could not take a video of the people trying their best to cram into a door that no one could fit in. For those of you who live in Toronto, if you think the TTC is crowded, you have seen nothing. Did I also mention the large suitcases each person carried? No. No, I didn’t.
In the end, it was quite the experience. I wish I got it on video.
