Onsen story

Today I went to this place called Oedo Onsen Monogatari. It's a bit like an onsen (hot spring) 'theme park' in Odaiba, Tokyo.

Let me tell you, the major Japanese holiday pastime is going to hot springs. In Australia, when we have holidays, lots of people head to the beach; in Japan, it's hot springs. And there are so many hot springs in this country. I recall when I was in a car with a GPS, the GPS had an option to search for the nearest hot spring. Even in Tokyo there are quite a few.

Now that I've been to one myself, I can tell you, it's extremely relaxing. Just as good as a leisurely day at the beach. ^_^

Anyway, I'd never been to a proper hot spring before (I'd taken a hot spring bath, but nobody else was there at the time).

So, I went with two friends, one male, one female. (I should give them names here; I see them often. The guy is Andy, the girl Jess. I climbed Mt Fuji with Jess.)

The system goes like this:

Enter the building and leave your shoes in a locker; take the key with you.

Go in and pay for entrance. You're given a locker key on a wristband, and select your choice of yukata (Japanese light robe), men and women go on into separate changerooms. In the changeroom, you can unlock your locker.

Once you go in through the changeroom, everyone, men and women, are walking around barefoot in yukata. This immediately gives a very casual, relaxed feeling. This part of the park is an indoor venue designed to look like an old-style Edo (Tokyo) street. There are souvenir stores and lots of small restaurants.

Within the park, you can pay for everything by scanner. Any time you buy something, they scan your locker key, which you keep around your wrist, so you can walk around without having to carry anything. At the end you pay the total when you leave.



It's a pretty cool system. We had lunch (I *love* tendon - tempura on rice) and pottered around the outdoor foot spas in a garden; it was really peaceful, only the huge tall buildings in the background reminded you you were in Tokyo. There were these ponds you could walk through, the bottom of which were lined with rocks. The website claims these rocks 'stimulate the soles of the feet', but in fact they just hurt.

But we got some unusual foot therapy!! There was this pool full of small black fish. They love eating dead skin, so when you put your feet in, they all go for your feet. They don't have teeth, so they nibble at you with their lips. It's the strangest sensation - really, really tickly, almost hard to keep your feet in the water at first, but then it becomes relaxing, like a vibrating massage. We had to pay extra for this but it was really, really cool. Apparently this treatment is kind of famous here.



This is one of those great things about living in Japan; sometimes you end up doing the most random things. "What are you doing this weekend?" "I plan to let fish eat my feet."

After a while, Andy had to leave, so Jess and I went off into the women's-only section. The other sections were men/women, but the hot springs proper was sex-segregated. And as soon as you go in there, you see a lot of naked people. It's very rare for people to bathe in hot springs wearing swimsuits. At first you feel a bit self-conscious but then it's no big deal.

One interesting thing is that in Japan, tattoos are usually associated with the yakuza; therefore a convenient way to keep 'undesirable' types out of places is to ban tattoos. So a lot of hot springs and swimming pools have a 'no tattoo' rule. Jess had a tattoo so she had to keep hiding it with her towel.

When you get into the hot spring part, first there's a room full of lockers, where people take off their yukata and underwear and get a towel. When you come out, there are hairdryers and so on in this area too. You get given a big towel, which you leave at the lockers, and a handtowel, which you can wet with cold water and rest on your head, to keep yourself from overheating.

When you leave the room you go into the big hot spring area. Before you can go in the baths you have to wash yourself; there are lots of little stalls where you can sit on a stool, apply soap etc, and pour water over yourself to get clean before you get in the bath.

There were various baths of varying heats and mineral compositions, and it was oh-so-relaxing. It was a bit hot for us (it was, after all, a very hot and humid day today, actually; summer only just finished) so we did a lot of changing pools, and tried the saunas, but it was all good.

After, we felt really relaxed, and we had booked a sand treatment. Hahah... this is where you basically go into a room and they wrap you up and cover you up to your neck with hot sand. It gets very hot and you can't move, they make you drink water before you go in because you sweat a lot. Afterwards you come out pouring sand. I'm not sure what the benefit of this is, but it was an interesting experience. ^_^

So I'm glad, I finally got to experience an onsen, and hopefully more in the future. ^_^