Gee whiz, it didn’t SEEM like that long since I last posted… I’ve been a busy boy, and we’ve had some health concerns, but I won’t bore you with the details. Instead, let’s talk about getting naked and dipping in hot water.
One of the pleasures of coming back to Japan after a five-year hiatus has been rediscovering the places that we loved the first time around. Masako and I remembered an onsen town somewhere in central Nagano Prefecture that we just loved, but neither of us could recall the name. After many hours poring over maps (there are hundreds of onsens- hot springs- in that part of Japan), we finally hit upon it: Shin-Hodaka. Besides being high up in the Kiso mountains and having nice views, Shin-Hodaka is great because most of the onsens are mixed gender, so Masako and I can go together. Mixed onsens are still somewhat common in northern Japan, and central Nagano represents the virtual “dividing line” between the natural and the prudish.
This was mid-April, a time when all of the snow (what very little there was of it) had utterly disappeared from our neck of the woods. I’m sitting in the onsen at the Shinzanso ryokan (inn), a very pleasant 90 degrees or so. The water here is chock full of minerals and stinks of rotten eggs (sulfur), which isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds. The concrete snakey thing in the background is the rock shield over the highway, which runs along the river. Yes, you can see nekkid people from the road, but they’re so far away that no one should be worried about it.
Looking the other way, we see the big wooden parasol thing for hiding under if it rains and a building hiding one of the pump mechanisms. Masako and I were the only ones here at this time… most people were working, heh heh heh.
One of the lower pools, which flows down from the water inlet and thus is a bit cooler. At the bottom is the river. The ugly concrete thing is the actual spring itself, capped over and sending its water uphill a bit to the top pool.
Apologies for the shot of my hairy gams, but I wanted you all to see the mineral flakes in the water. No, that’s not leg hair dandruff.
Part of the secondary pumping system that supplies spring water to the ryokan, where you can stay overnight if you don’t have a micro van with a futon like ours. While it looks like Rube Goldberg was the designer behind this system, I’m sure there’s a logical explanation… really…
A shot of the Shinzanso ryokan and the bridge across the river from the parking lot. The spring we were sitting in is off the right hand side of the picture.
Late afternoon sun on the mountains…
Next, we went to a ryokan by the name of Suimeikan, with a pair of really huge pools and lots of big rocks. Water is pumped in through the fountain there in the center… which you shouldn’t touch, to avoid scalding. Hot hot hot!
Ahhhhh…
Suimeikan’s pools are also fed by this artifical waterfall, which cools the water a bit… check out the flora and mineralization.
There’s also this nifty cave, where you can sit and contemplate and soak. It was hard to get a shot because of all the steam, and it was a bit too hot and close for me to stay for very long, but it was still awesome.
More to come, as usual…
