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8/29
In the morning, it was fun to get up with a full house again after living alone for a while. My companions were talking a lot about Onsens and needing to go to one, after all, the Hell Festival is all about onsens (hot springs). As much as the idea was intriguing, I wasn’t much excited to get naked in a room full of Japanese women.
We took our time and hopped a train to the next city, and then a bus. There were a lot of gigantic stuffed bears all around (the gross real kind, not the cute kind), which meant a lot of ridiculous photos were taken. I was also lucky enough to turn down two bathrooms with squat toilets only to discover the most luxuriant set of toilets I’ve ever seen in Japan when I couldn’t wait any longer. Lucky!!
The excitement was building! They also had some great omiyage stores, so I stocked up on presents (for myself and others!) and they had cute cute demon themed snacks like chocolate covered battle clubs and the like. Demons, demons, everywhere. In Japanese, demons are called oni, so henceforth that’s what I’ll call them.
The oni are relatively cute and brightly colored folks, always dressed in animal skins with little horns. I suppose they can’t be sinister beings when they bring you the hot springs you love up from the bowels of hell.
We milled around for a while waiting for CR to show up. (I will call him CR because he reminds me of the Canadian version of the amazing Raymond WR.) Alcohol was purchased and consumed in the street in front of cops. Pictures were taken of this activity. A woman looked at us like we were soooo weird, but she’ll never understand until she lives in a city where it’s illegal! Also during our wait, we found the mountain with the giant bear park on top. There was a small lift like a ski lift that you could ride up to the entrance. It was the most rickety thing ever, which of course meant we were willing to pay the $2 to ride it up 3 flights of stairs. We chatted with the lift manager for a while, though it was mostly me because he didn’t speak English and Rin and The Canadian don’t speak much Japanese. He was a funny dude and he shared a Japanese joke with me. When I asked if we could bring our beers on the lift, he said, “Yes, you can drink your beers. Just don’t drink anyone else’s beer!” LOLS
From there we refused to ride all the way to the top and pay $20 to see some bears, so we meandered and eventually CR showed up. The Canadian was hell-bent (no pun intended) on getting an oni mask and we couldn’t find the free ones, so he bought one for $8 of pretty decent quality, which of course lead to even more shenanigans involving chasing children and dancing around for old women in a demon mask. While we were taking pictures with the giant fiberglass oni, a little boy and his mom were waiting and we invited him into our shots. At that point, his mom said, “Yes! Go stand next to Nee-san (big sister)! And I was like “yeeeeeeee! :D :D “ After that, the Candian noticed an old woman waiting nearby and he helped her up onto the platform and took a picture with her too. Her daughter was tickled and so was she. It was just as cute, if not cuter, than the little boy incident.
We had some time to kill before the real festivities, so we decided to explore the hiking trails behind the city. This was a very good idea, because it lead us around beautiful trails, through forests, and past boiling lakes, rivers, and geysers, and jagged cliff faces from the explosion of boiling waters many years ago. The ground was steaming volcanic gas in some places, which is all well and fine on tv but when you see it in real life it just doesn’t make sense and it’s absolutely amazing. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to be the first person to stumble across it and realize you could die by getting in the water. There were signs everywhere saying, “DO NOT DRINK THIS. DO NOT TOUCH THIS,” in multiple languages and many areas were blocked off to keep you out (in a very natural and complementary way though, it’s not like the effect was destroyed.)
The whole place smells like sulfur because of the onsens and volcanic activity, but you get used to it.
I knew I didn’t really want to go to a real onsen and get naked, so I really pushed for us to go to the natural foot bath, a river of 80 degree water where you could strip off your shoes and wade around. It was fabulous! Also while we were there, I met the daughter of the eccentric yakitori celebrity from my city! She was visiting with her Canadian husband, studying up to open a yakitori shop in Canada. What a small world! I can’t wait to see him again and tell him I met his daughter!
The food was also not to be outdone. I ate green tea ice cream, a tornado potato (similar but not quite as fantastic as the guruguru wiener!) and a giant baseball sized ball of gooey fried cheese. AWESOME. After that, we ALL decided we needed masks to match The Canadians, so we bought them and there were more shenanigans. There were mikoshi at this parade again (portable shrines) and though they were a lot less raucous, the Canadian boys got in on the action and helped carry it, which was easier said than done, considering they were significantly taller than their carrying brethern. In the street we ran into a good 15 other JETs from varying distances and it felt a little like home. Impromptu dance parties and taiko performances were erupting everywhere, I joined in the giant demon dance conga line and when one of the dance parties surfaced with me in the center, I couldn’t help but dance and hop until I couldn’t any more. It felt good, out of all the time in my life I’ve spent hesitating about physical activity, I was able to let loose. I am optimistic for my future dance parties ^.^
Impromptu dance parties in Japan are very cool because they’re very organized, someone will solo an instrument while everyone squats, and then the whole band starts in and everyone begins jumping around again. It’s very exciting that way, fleshing out the mood with up time and down time. It makes you feel like you’re building something.
At the end of the night, we took a cab back to the train station because the busses had stopped running. Still, it wasn’t so expensive because there were four of us. I kept steady Japanese conversation with the driver, which I was very proud of, and when we got back to the City by the Sea we bought a ton of Japanese snacks from the conbini and had a little nightcap of our own. None of us could quite believe the fantastic time we’d had.
In the morning, it was fun to get up with a full house again after living alone for a while. My companions were talking a lot about Onsens and needing to go to one, after all, the Hell Festival is all about onsens (hot springs). As much as the idea was intriguing, I wasn’t much excited to get naked in a room full of Japanese women.
We took our time and hopped a train to the next city, and then a bus. There were a lot of gigantic stuffed bears all around (the gross real kind, not the cute kind), which meant a lot of ridiculous photos were taken. I was also lucky enough to turn down two bathrooms with squat toilets only to discover the most luxuriant set of toilets I’ve ever seen in Japan when I couldn’t wait any longer. Lucky!!
The excitement was building! They also had some great omiyage stores, so I stocked up on presents (for myself and others!) and they had cute cute demon themed snacks like chocolate covered battle clubs and the like. Demons, demons, everywhere. In Japanese, demons are called oni, so henceforth that’s what I’ll call them.
The oni are relatively cute and brightly colored folks, always dressed in animal skins with little horns. I suppose they can’t be sinister beings when they bring you the hot springs you love up from the bowels of hell.
We milled around for a while waiting for CR to show up. (I will call him CR because he reminds me of the Canadian version of the amazing Raymond WR.) Alcohol was purchased and consumed in the street in front of cops. Pictures were taken of this activity. A woman looked at us like we were soooo weird, but she’ll never understand until she lives in a city where it’s illegal! Also during our wait, we found the mountain with the giant bear park on top. There was a small lift like a ski lift that you could ride up to the entrance. It was the most rickety thing ever, which of course meant we were willing to pay the $2 to ride it up 3 flights of stairs. We chatted with the lift manager for a while, though it was mostly me because he didn’t speak English and Rin and The Canadian don’t speak much Japanese. He was a funny dude and he shared a Japanese joke with me. When I asked if we could bring our beers on the lift, he said, “Yes, you can drink your beers. Just don’t drink anyone else’s beer!” LOLS
From there we refused to ride all the way to the top and pay $20 to see some bears, so we meandered and eventually CR showed up. The Canadian was hell-bent (no pun intended) on getting an oni mask and we couldn’t find the free ones, so he bought one for $8 of pretty decent quality, which of course lead to even more shenanigans involving chasing children and dancing around for old women in a demon mask. While we were taking pictures with the giant fiberglass oni, a little boy and his mom were waiting and we invited him into our shots. At that point, his mom said, “Yes! Go stand next to Nee-san (big sister)! And I was like “yeeeeeeee! :D :D “ After that, the Candian noticed an old woman waiting nearby and he helped her up onto the platform and took a picture with her too. Her daughter was tickled and so was she. It was just as cute, if not cuter, than the little boy incident.
We had some time to kill before the real festivities, so we decided to explore the hiking trails behind the city. This was a very good idea, because it lead us around beautiful trails, through forests, and past boiling lakes, rivers, and geysers, and jagged cliff faces from the explosion of boiling waters many years ago. The ground was steaming volcanic gas in some places, which is all well and fine on tv but when you see it in real life it just doesn’t make sense and it’s absolutely amazing. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to be the first person to stumble across it and realize you could die by getting in the water. There were signs everywhere saying, “DO NOT DRINK THIS. DO NOT TOUCH THIS,” in multiple languages and many areas were blocked off to keep you out (in a very natural and complementary way though, it’s not like the effect was destroyed.)
The whole place smells like sulfur because of the onsens and volcanic activity, but you get used to it.
I knew I didn’t really want to go to a real onsen and get naked, so I really pushed for us to go to the natural foot bath, a river of 80 degree water where you could strip off your shoes and wade around. It was fabulous! Also while we were there, I met the daughter of the eccentric yakitori celebrity from my city! She was visiting with her Canadian husband, studying up to open a yakitori shop in Canada. What a small world! I can’t wait to see him again and tell him I met his daughter!
The food was also not to be outdone. I ate green tea ice cream, a tornado potato (similar but not quite as fantastic as the guruguru wiener!) and a giant baseball sized ball of gooey fried cheese. AWESOME. After that, we ALL decided we needed masks to match The Canadians, so we bought them and there were more shenanigans. There were mikoshi at this parade again (portable shrines) and though they were a lot less raucous, the Canadian boys got in on the action and helped carry it, which was easier said than done, considering they were significantly taller than their carrying brethern. In the street we ran into a good 15 other JETs from varying distances and it felt a little like home. Impromptu dance parties and taiko performances were erupting everywhere, I joined in the giant demon dance conga line and when one of the dance parties surfaced with me in the center, I couldn’t help but dance and hop until I couldn’t any more. It felt good, out of all the time in my life I’ve spent hesitating about physical activity, I was able to let loose. I am optimistic for my future dance parties ^.^
Impromptu dance parties in Japan are very cool because they’re very organized, someone will solo an instrument while everyone squats, and then the whole band starts in and everyone begins jumping around again. It’s very exciting that way, fleshing out the mood with up time and down time. It makes you feel like you’re building something.
At the end of the night, we took a cab back to the train station because the busses had stopped running. Still, it wasn’t so expensive because there were four of us. I kept steady Japanese conversation with the driver, which I was very proud of, and when we got back to the City by the Sea we bought a ton of Japanese snacks from the conbini and had a little nightcap of our own. None of us could quite believe the fantastic time we’d had.
