Kyoto Part I: Nara Nude Dudes

The first day of a crazy weekend.

Rather use long sentences to try and convey in my writing what the Japanese convey in one word, I decided to include a small glosary of terms to start.

onsen - public bathouses built on top of hotsprings. they are awesome and ill talk more about these later.

omiage - souvenirs, but it also refers to gifts that are bought and given almost every time you visit someone's house.

gyoza - pan-fried dumplings filled with pork, garlic, and onions.

gaijin - foreigner, referring to a non-japanese person, not the 80's band.

[currently $1 = 118¥, but for money-saving purposes, and easy calculation, i usually consider $1 to be 100¥. so 1,000¥ is $10 and so forth.]

5:00pm - Departure

Drew, Alisha, Dan, and I leave Haruno to go to Masa and Chiaki's house. We arrive at 6:00pm. We all pile into Masa's minivan and take off to Nagoya airport where Drew's sister, Julie, is scheduled to arrive at 7:20.

8:10pm - Performance Art Fail

The drive to the airport takes longer than anticipated. We arrive almost an hour after Julie's scheduled arrival. Fortunately, her flight was delayed by an hour so we are actually 10 minutes early. We spend the extra time practicing spelling J-U-L-I-E with our bodies so when she arrives we can spell her name out. I take on the physically challenging E, but when she finally emerges from customs we get too excited and fumble. None of the letters are legible. We look like we've been stricken with some kind of sickness,. and my rendering of E goes down into the bulging annals of failed performance art. After a little shopping in the airport buying omiage for Chiaki's parents, we head to their house in Nara.

12:15am - Ramen!

We finally arrive in Nara, exhausted and hungry. Since it's so late, we stop at a ramen shop and I have my first bowl of non-instant ramen. I choose "stamina ramen," which contains chicken and cabbage in a spicy and salty broth. I add some chili paste for extra kick and a dollop of smooshed garlic for extra stink. We also have some gyoza to add to the garlic funk. So tasty but, man, when we get into the car it smells like a garlic field. Luckily, our next destination will take care of that.

1:45am - Onsen Super Center

We get to the super-center, the place we will spend our first night. It is called a super-center (or rather, a 'supaa-sentaa') because its has an onsen, multiple restaurants, a bar, arcade, lounges, TVs, and sleeping quarters. We pay the ¥1,000 entrance fee and receive little wristbands. They are a key for our lockers and and will also activate any vending machine or service in the building.

We split from the ladies and head into the men's onsen. This particular onsen is not as authentic as others in the area, but what it lacks in aesthetics, it makes up for in convenience. We are provided a scrub towel, a drying towel (you normally have to take your own) as well as toiletries. Before we enter any of the public baths we have to shower off any dirt and dead skin. Oh, did I mention all this must be done in the nude? So after leaving our clothes and self-consciousness in our lockers, we proceeded to the showers, which is actually just a long bench with individual shower heads four feet apart. After scrubbing down, we tried the indoor baths, but they just arent warm enough. After a few minutes we decide to brave the really hot baths, which are only 30 feet away, but located in the near-freezing outdoors. A couple Japanese men chuckle at us dashing into the cold and plunging into the steaming water, but it is completely worth it. A few minutes and several relaxed muscles later we hop back inside and spent another 10 minutes in a steam sauna. Finally Dan (who somehow managed the whole weekend with only a light sweater!) and I take the ultimate step and finish our bathing with a dunk in the cold bath. I only stay in it for about 10 seconds, but can feel my pores closin ,and feel physically and mentally revitalized. While I wish I could have gotten pictures of the whole event, for obvious reasons they don't allow cameras in the onsen; the lenses would get foggy.

Back at the lockers, I try to put on the after-bathing pajamas that are provided, but, as with most things in this country, they dont fit. Luckily I had packed a pair of shorts and a t-shirt which works just as well.

3:00am - Communal bedtime.

We meet back up with the ladies and head to the sleeping quarters where I proceed to have my first big culture-shock moment since arriving in japan. Instead of the smaller common room I had imagined, we enter one gigantic hall filled with rows and rows of recliners! I hear people in various states of sleep, some snore away quietly and others not nearly quiet enough. We grab some blankets, fumble around in the darkness until we find a row of empty recliners, and fall asleep almost instantly.

Tomorrow: deer-poop, screaming children, giant buddhas and some non-naked pictures!