Well, it’s 2010. While the world was arguing about whether we should call it ‘two thousand and ten’ or ‘twenty – ten’ (clearly the latter), I slipped off to Onneyu Onsen (an onsen is a hot spring bath resort) outside Rubeshibe in Hokkaido. My first and long-awaited onsen visit, and it was the in-laws’ treat.
It was snowing heavily (the first of what looks to be a bad January – 110cm the other day), the roads were turning white, and some poor soul had lost control of his car and it plunged into the roadside ditch. Clearly we arrived safely, but the journey wasn’t without its thrills.
I was glad to get through the doors to the hotel to warm up, but then i grew alarmed: had I stumbled into some sort of pantomime? The hotel staff were wearing face paint as they went about their reception duties, and one was in drag (albeit a female yukata, but still drag). It turned out that they were having a special New Year’s event and we had a small indoor festival to look forward to that night. But that could all wait… You don’t go to an onsen and ethuse about the sideshow. No, you go to get in the bath!
The Baths
The first thing that struck me was the fact that I would be bathing with my father-in-law, and while I previously said that you shouldn’t be afraid of nudity in the bathhouses, this felt a little more personal and uncomfortable – until I got soaking that was. With the 45°C water and the slight whiff of sulphur, I quickly got over my embarrassment and started to enjoy it.
The water temperature was surprising. Sitting beside the entry point of the spring water was so hot I couldn’t bear it. While the average temperature ranged around the mid-40s, the temperature by the tap (or whatever you might call the trickling stream of geothermally-heated water) had to have been in the 60s or 70s.
There were several baths of varying temperatures and infusions but also, most importantly for me, a rotenburo (outdoor bath). Rotenburo are the quintessential element of an onsen visit. With the outside air in the minuses, it was instantly relaxing to sink up to my shoulders and watch the steam drift along the surface of the bath. Protecting our modest from the balcony above and from the falling snow was a bamboo wind-shelter, but it was hard to really care about all that. The only thing I had to worry about was the sub-zero naked walk back inside (a sprinkler sprayed hot water pouring onto the stone path so that it didn’t feel too cold underfoot).
At midnight until 10am (check-out time), the bath areas switched. So the next morning I was able to go to the ‘female’ side (of course, having switched with us, there were no women there). Whereas the previous side was like a cave: no windows, stony walls, with a damp atmosphere, the other side was bright and airy with windows facing onto the town (with opaque tint to hide the naughty bits from the outside world (although I imagine there is a telescope shop doing quite brisk business down there). The baths were mostly the same, but less roughly designed. There were also two rotenburo. The first had the same swimming pool-like features, plus a reclined area for lying in. This side also faced the town, but a large bamboo screen hid everything from the outside world (although I could see through the small gaps). The second rotenburo was the best: it was quite small, but it had a rock garden around it, and the trees were close enough to touch. Someone had made two little snowmen and placed them on the rocks beside the pool. As I sat in there, my mind drifted off. Eventually though, the conflicting temperatures between my head and my body were tiring me out, so I got out. However, that bath really made my holiday for me.
The one thing I knew about but had never encountered in previous bathing locations was young children. At first I was a little disconcerted about seeing a parade of young girls accompanying their fathers into the bath. I could hear The Sun and the Daily Mail readers preparing their torches and pitchforks… But I realised that it didn’t really matter. If anything, the propensity for Japanese fathers to bathe with their daughters and mothers with their sons might help create a healthy attitude toward nakedness, something severely lacking in modern Britain or America. Then again, thinking about some of the sexual mores created here, this attitude might not really be a good thing.
The Meals
After the first bath, we went for dinner. The hotel served a buffet-style breakfast and dinner, although other courses were apparently available (in a different hall). Everyone (about 50 people) gathered in the dining hall, a large tatami-floored room and helped themselves to sushi, noodles, meat, and particularly crab. I’d only eaten crab from the shell on New Year’s Eve for osechi, the New Year’s feast (outside Hokkaido, people eat osechi on New Year’s day), but these ones were much bigger and meatier than I’d ever seen. I ate my fill and drank beer by the litre. The quality was good, but at breakfast I resented the lack of kocha (normal tea, to us Brits). I can’t function without my morning cuppa, and I spent the better part of the 3rd trying to stay awake.
The Rooms
The room was wonderful. Above the genkan was the washbasin. There was a washlet toilet in the bathroom, along with a bath and shower (in case you couldn’t go into the public one, I guess – infectious diseases, period, disability perhaps). As I write this, it occurs to me that that was the first bathroom toilet I had seen in Japan since I came here to live. Typically the toilet is stuck in a small room of its own for several reasons: hygiene – the toilet is dirty, hence you don’t put it where you want to clean yourself; mould – it’s hard enough to keep the shower area clean; and finally, convenience – most Japanese houses seem to have only one toilet, and people sometimes bathe/poo for eternity.
The next room was the living area. A big coffee table stood at the centre, surrounded by zabuton (cushions). There was a TV, a kettle, some matcha- (powdered green tea) making facilities, and two armchairs. This room was separated from the sleeping area by sliding doors, and while we ate dinner, the staff pulled our futon out of the cupboards and made our beds. The whole area was tatami and, despite being uncomfortably warm, it was very pleasant.
The Festival
As I mentioned before, the hotel held a festival inside the building. After dinner, we went to play some traditional games. We all gave hoopla a go, and Keiko did exceptionally well. Emasculated by my loss, I moved on to the pop-gun gallery. With my exceptional shooting ability, I scored a surfboard-shaped lighter (which I had to leave in Hokkaido) and a toy sword (which I will be giving to one lucky child in the near future). I then attempted the most heinous game known to man: you have to cut a shape out of a thin sugar wafer using a drawing pin and a toothbrush without breaking the internal shape. It’s very, very difficult. Nothing happened when I scraped and brushed, so I turned to brute force, using the pin to snap parts away, hoping the counter-sunk edges of the shape would cleave nicely. Of course I was wrong though, and Keiko and I dropped out with only cardboard-tasting broken pieces of sugar wafers for consolation.
The next event was a geiko oiran parade. Keiko said something about one of them coming from Tokyo, but I’m pretty sure the main ‘girl’ was a guy. Either way, he or she had 50cm geta (traditional outdoor sandals) and walked with sweeping motions along the corridor as people snapped pictures of her/him. At the end, our whole family sat in front of her/him, plus two (other) girls [Keiko has told me they were all guys!] for a souvenir photograph.
We couldn’t stick around, however, as we were worried we would miss the opening of a cask of sake (they are opened with a hammer). Unfortunately, we did miss it, but the sake was free and so I wasted no time in gulping a few down. Meanwhile, the hotel held a draw for a range of prizes: weekends in other fantastic hotels, crab, sweets, and fish… there were so many prizes and seemingly so few guests that it looked like everyone would be a winner. Everyone around us seemed to win and we had some really close calls, but even with two rooms to our name, we went away with nothing (well, not quite nothing, I had some more sake to compensate).
The final stage of the festival was mochi-tsuki, (making rice cakes). I had a go at this last year, and I’m glad I did because it seemed that the hotel wasn’t letting just anyone have a go. We watched two burly hotel staff pound the rice into a sticky mess, and then ate the fruits of their labour: Keiko ate them with a little kinako, but I stuck to the anko (I’ve really taken a liking to anko - a sweet bean paste).
Final Impressions
The one thing that really struck me on this visit to Hokkaido, and to the onsen in particular, was the complete absence of obvious foreigners. That wasn’t to say that there weren’t any, clearly there were: I saw eikaiwa all over the place and the faces of ALTs in the local news-zine. There were undoubtedly Chinese and Koreans around, that particular area of Hokkaido has received a tourism boom after a few Chinese and Korean movie and drama features, but they could slip bar far less noticeably than I.
I sat down to eat my mochi in the hotel on a bench by myself. A couple of kids came over. The two kids sat down on the bench beside me, and the youngest, a girl of about 6, kept looking at me. I turned to her and smiled (my time spent teaching kids has made me far more friendlier towards the younger ones), but she continued to stare. A few moments later she swapped places with her brother.
A little while later, their grandfather strolled over and crouched down on the floor beside them, so I scooted over to the other bench (Keiko’s father had left and thus made some space) and offered the seat to him. As he sat down, the boy turned to his grandfather and said “Gaikokuji wa me-“. He didn’t get to finish his sentence as his grandfather shushed him. I assume that the kid was about to say that foreigners were pretty rare, he might (if I heard wrong) have been trying to say something else, but either way, he was just a little kid so I told the grandfather that it was okay. In the bath that night I bumped into the same kids, all of us stark naked, and they didn’t bat an eyelid. Every time I give up my seat, every time I try to help someone out here, it’s with full knowledge that I might be helping to break the stereotype: not all hakujin (literally, white people) are loud and self-centred. We’re not going to bite, and some of us can speak Japanese. I hope that just that small change in those kids’ attitudes will have stronger effects later on, but who’s to say.
Later the next day, as we went shopping for souvenirs in Kitami (a small city), a woman stared at me so hard she even craned her neck as we passed one another. That, to me, was a bit offensive (unless she thought I was cute/sexy, in which case, ewww). One of the benefits of having a Japanese wife in Japan, particularly one from the countryside, is that you really do get off the beaten track. As foreigners penetrate deeper into Japanese society and gain wider and more personal exposure, we might make some changes for the better here.
Anyway, OnneyuOnsen: check it out.
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