Hokkaido

I've been traveling with my friend Derek around the northern part of Japan for the past week and a half or so. Most recently we were in Sapporo, Japan's beer capital. We went on a brewery tour, saw a brewery museum, a sake museum, and four beer gardens--one for each of the four major Japanese breweries. We had all-you-can-eat Mongolian barbecue at one of the beer gardens. Which included all-you-can-drink beer. (Don't worry Mom, I'm not drinking to excess here; if I did I wouldn't be able to tell the taxi drivers where to drop us off. We've had terrible bad luck with taxis here. They seem to not know their way around the town.)

Right now we're passing time in an internet cafe. We are going to take a ferry from Tomakomai in Hokkaido back to Oarai, near Tokyo. It's a 19-hour trip, but we've got a 4-share room. And dramamine.

I'm enjoying Japan, but I also miss being in an English-speaking country. I try to find little pieces of America where I can. I found a box of Special K Red Berries at Japan's version of Wal-Mart, so I've been having cereal for breakfast, instead of the corn soup that they usually have at the free continental breakfasts.

One Japanese tradition that I'm really enjoying is the onsen. An onsen is a traditional Japanese hot springs or hot bath. A single-sex, completely nude hot springs. The first onsen I went to was in the ryokan (traditional Japanese hotel) we stayed at after the Mt. Fuji trip. Fortunately, I had someone to teach me how to do it the first time.

You start by going into a sort of locker room where you take off all your clothes and put them into a basket. Then you enter a shower room, where you sit on a wooden stool and take a shower with a handheld showerhead. Shampoo, conditioner, and body wash are provided. The very nice onsens have expensive brands. When you're all clean and rinsed, then you can go sit in the hot bath with other naked people. There are often both indoor and outdoor bath options. The temperature of the baths range from "very hot" to "sit very still and don't make any turbulence in the water so that it doesn't scorch you." Even though it's the middle of summer, it's fantastic. And when you're done you can go sit on the stool and douse yourself in cold water from the shower head.

I don't have any onsen pictures, for obvious reasons. But you can take a look at the onsen we went to yesterday: Hoheikyo Onsen. After I got out of the hot springs, I got a massage. And then delicious Indian food for dinner. Ahhhh...