When the boys are away, the girls will play. At least that's the way Mel and I figured it. We had made plans to go to Daizu antique bazaar with a tour group from base. Thursday while I was at her house making cookies (her toaster oven is everything she said it was), we got a call saying the trip was canceled for lack of people. The base is having it's own bazaar this weekend, so I guess no one thought it was worth traveling.
Not wanting to waste a whole weekend, Mel and I decided to plan our own trip somewhere. She's going to be leaving in a few months, and she had a few places nearby that she still hasn't seen. One of them was a place called Unzen, which has an active Volcano (there are a lot of those around here) and hot springs. Mel raved about Japanese bathing, and this seemed like a good place to go to try it out. So we hurried to base and got someone in MWR to help us book a Japanese style hotel room in a hotel with an Onsen (the Japanese bath).
We left Sasebo at noon on Friday armed with maps and our fresh cookies, and I played navigator to Mel's driving. We even got a taste of Japanese radio, which I learned was mostly talk, but we heard a lovely country song that was mostly in Japanese with the chorus of "Hey there, hey there..." ... interesting... and we arrived in Unzen around 2:30. The town was up a winding road from the coast. It's fairly small, but quite cute. Because of all the hot springs, it smells strongly of sulfer pretty much everywhere you go. I have no idea how the locals deal with it constantly.
We checked into our hotel and set out to see some of the town before dinner (which was included in our room cost). We quickly found a walking path that took us around to the various hot springs. The water apparently bubbles up from the earth at temperatures of up to 120 degress celcius. The springs as a whole have a name that roughly translated means 88,000 hells. It's taken from a budhist myth that says that there are 88,000 ways you can sin as a human, so if you live a bad life you have to go through 88,000 hells. The Japanese rulers used this myth as an excuse to torture Christians at Unzen during Japan's isolationist phase. They took people who continuted to follow christianty and threw them into the hot springs. There's a memorial to the Christians on the walking tour now.
Other than the hot springs, Mel and I learned about the only thing to do in town was the hang out in an onsen. So we returned to our hotel and soaked our feet at the foot spa outside for awhile before going to dinner. As a result, we were outside when two busloads of Japanese tourists pulled up. If we had imagined we'd have a quiet night in a mostly empty hotel, we were totally wrong. It didn't really matter, though.
Dinner was pretty amazing for a meal that was included in a room fee, but Mel tells me it's pretty standard fare for the Japanese hotels. There were several kinds of sashimi (which I'm liking better the more I try it), a salty custard thing with meat, a shrimp salad, some pickled vegetables, two kinds of soup, rice, and a sweet custard for dessert. We also ordered some sake. The lady who served us was very nice, but spoke no English, so she did a lot of motioning from one dish to the next to try to explain how we should eat it. It was nice of her to try.
After dinner, we waited a little while to let our food settle before going down to the onsen. There's a procedure for using the Japanese baths, so Mel gave me a tutorial while we waited. Step one: in your room, take off your clothes and put on the robe provided for the purpose (make sure you tie it left side over right because the other way is bad luck). Grab the hand sized towel and the thick body towel also provided. Step two: go down to the baths, determine which one is for girls and which is for boys (sometimes complicated since they're not labeled in English), and go through the apropriate door. Having tried this now, I'm planning to memorize the kanji for Woman. Step 3: deposit robe and body towel in a basket on a shelf in the first room. Step 4: take a shower to get clean. This is done in an individual stall sitting down on a little stool. The onsen provides shampoo and soap. You can use the hand sized towel as a wash cloth. Make sure you rinse your stool when you're done. Step 5: Pick a bath and soak. Don't stare at the other bathers, it's rude. Don't but your hand towel in the water, that's also rude, but you can use it to cover up... um... certain areas... when walking from bath to bath.
The onsen in our hotel had three baths: one clear warm water, one with all the minerals still in it, and one outside also with all the minerals in it (the area was enclosed from all sides so no one could see in). They also had a little kitty pool with toys that wasn't so hot, a cold water bath to cool off in, and a sauna. I have to say, I wasn't sure how well I'd do wandering around naked with strangers, but it was a wonderfully relaxing experience. I had a great time. We wandered from bath to bath soaking then cooling off. Outside was expecially nice because the air was so cool. We bathed for like two hours straight.
Once we were done, we rinsed off all the minerals and they had hair dryers and some lotion to use. Then it was off to our room to go to bed.
The room, before I forget, was also Japanese style. There was a shoe cubby just inside the door and when we first arrived there was a little table and some pillows on the floor to sit with hot tea waiting. While we ate, they pulled our our futon materesses so they'd be ready when it was time for bed. It was adorable.
The next morning, we woke up to an unpleasant surprise: rain and fog. We went down for our (also included) breakfast, which was very similar to dinner minus the dessert, and decided to go up to try to see the volcano anyway. When we checked out, three hotel attendants held umbrellas for us and escorted us to the car thanking us repeatedly.
So we set off in hopes of seeing the volcano. We weren't able to do so, though. They apparently closed it off due to bad weather. Instead, we decided to take the road across the island to Shimabara, home to a bunch of temples and a Japanese castle. Temples are mostly outdoor, and the rain didn't give us a break, so the castle ended up being our destination. The original, like most castles in Japan, had burned down many many years ago, so what we saw was a replica. We were allowed into three buildings. The main one housed a museum with four floors of historical Samurai artifacts and one floor dedicated to the Shimabara rebellion in which a 16 year old led the Christians of Kyushu to rebel against the samuaris. They took the castle, but then they were seiged and the samurai killed everyone. Nasty business. Pretty castle.
One of the smaller buildings contained a bunch of statues, presumably made by the same guy who did the peace park statue in Nagasaki. They had a mini version of the peace park one and then many many others of various subjects. The only things in English were the titles of the scuptures. There were animals (mostly tigers and dragons), men doing activites and women either riding animals or holding children. They were quite lovely.
The third building housed more artifacts from the Samurai period, these made mostly of wood. they were daily supply type things like a winnower for rice and chests. It was kind of interesting to try to figure out what some of the tools were.
Probably the best part, though, was the macha house that was on the grounds. Matcha is a special type of green tea. There's a whole special ceremony for serving it. Mel said that as a tea lover I couldn't miss it and she'd walk me through the process. We sat on a mat on the floor of this building and women dressed in kimonos brought us a little cake apiece. They set the cakes in front of us and then bowed and we bowed back, then they scurried away. Next came the tea. It was served in fancy bowls. The women placed the bowls with the pretty side facing us, then bowed and we bowed back. Then it was our job to admire the bowl, then turn it around so we didn't drink from the fancy side. The tea itself is made from green tea leaves ground to a fine powder. The powder is then whisked with hot water until it's frothy and green. Really green. Grass green. Turn-your-tongue-and-lips-green green. My dad drinks coffee you can chew. Matcha is green tea you can chew (though Mel tells me there's another variety that is actually pancake batter thick). It is polite to slurp this tea to show your appreciation. When you're done, you turn the cup back so the pretty side is facing you and wipe where you drank. Then the women come and take it away.
All this was pretty cool, but what made it especially nice was that the ladies were having a slow morning, so they stopped at the end to talk to us, and between us, Mel and I had enough Japanese to carry on the conversation. We told them where we were from and that we are English teachers and they found all this very nice. They then offered to serve us more tea, so that was cool, too. I made one lady's day by telling her her kimono was pretty (the word for pretty has been the most useful Japanese word I've learned when it comes to making friends). Then they let us take a picture with them. (It's on Mel's camera, so I'll have to send it on later.)
By this time it was approaching noon and Mel's cat and Dory were calling our names, so we headed on home in the still pouring down rain. Overall, though, it was quite a successful adventure. I'm hoping Zack will have enough time some weekend to go back and check it out.
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