The Onsen! Oh the Onsen...

So me and Pascal went to an onsen here, which is essentially a natural spring water outdoor bath!  They're a national obsession here in Japan so I decided from the outset that I wanted to see what all the fuss is about.

To go to a 'proper' onsen you must travel to the countryside, away from the big cities.  This involved a number of forms of transport, and a fair amount of uphill walking.  I've said before that Japan is mountainous, but you only find this out properly when you move away from the cities.  The reason being, cities are densely populated areas, and areas of dense population in Japan reside around the plains and flatlands.  The countryside is anywhere without city, and is therefore invariably on the side of a mountain.  Anyway, I digress.

We yomped around the mountainside before we hit the hotspring, and this is what the photographs are of.  Obviously, I couldn't take my camera into the onsen with me; so here are the photographs of the town:

I really loved the rural areas we travelled through.  I could definitely live in these areas as well.  The local train was one carriage in size, and was more of a tram than a train.  Everyone was friendly, if a little short (because of our lack of Japanese) and all the children ran up to us saying stupid, barely intelligible things in English.  Perfect English teacher territory I think.

The whole place had a country feel, it was exceptional.

Our cute little train!

One carriage.

I think ours actually had two, but it's the point here that matters!

I hope the entire country has areas like this.  It's something else entirely.

This ugly fellow is called a tengu.  It's kind of like a devil thing; I'm not really sure how to define it.

This town had a disproportionate number of these masks all over the place, so it's probably a protective deity or some such thing.

It's ugly though, and there's no way they can be perceived of as anything but ugly, yet a lot of the people think they're cute here.  I don't understand

I think living in one of these houses would be great, you're as close to nature as is possible in Japan if you live here.

Even the cute little train stops running at a reasonably time, so you wouldn't lose sleep over the constant noise of wheels on a track.

I don't think a commute is a viable option though; it's a twenty minute walk from the other end of the trainline to a main trainline, so there's lots of changes before you even get to a main line in order to begin your 'proper' commute.  You would need a car, and owning a car here may cost you organs.

So we began our ascent of mt.Japan (a name I just came up with) around 1PM, having eaten in a small Japanese style cafe (I looked in one opposite, left, then went back to it for dinner!).  We went halfway around mount Japan, then to the onsen for a few hours.

Yeah we sat in the bath for a few hours.  It's too relaxing.

It's far too relaxing, seriously.


So I'd advise anyone to go and check out an onsen while they're here.  I'd imagine one with a decent view would help.



So like I said, the mountainside was my main photograph focus, nakedness is not photogenic; that's why this post is so short!