Flat3D

Snow in the buff

This past week or two has seen the first real snowfall in Ajigasawa. We had maybe 10-20 centimetres of snow and its still around outside. But this is only the beginning! It makes me feel kind of depressed though. See the amount of snow we got is about the max snowfall we would get at home, and now it is melting away, it feels like that is it, that is all we are getting. But the Elliots say different and have shown me photos to prove it. I must say it is hard to believe what they say, but its coming! Snow as high as me (even higher)!

So yeah, one of the things that is recommended to be done on a trip to Japan is to have an onsen in an rotemburo in the snow. So when it was snowing we went to the onsen in Ajigasawa. Now I realise I haven’t mentioned the onsen before, so I will take a moment now to explain it.

Japan is, as some may know, sitting over a hotbed of tectonic activity, earthquakes are an everyday thing, volcanoes dot the landscape and big lizard like monsters rampage through downtown tokyo every other fortnight (ok, so the last one isn’t true). But this tectonic activity leads to a multitude of hot springs and so on all over the place. So the Japanese, enterprising bunch that they are, drill down into these hot water aquifers and pump up the water into nice hot baths for the public to use (usually for a small fee). This is called an onsen (the actual bath is called an o-furo and if its outside its called an rotemburo, literally “dew of heaven” bath, thanks ruth!).

So yeah, you go in and there are seperate men’s and women’s bathrooms. The reason for this is because you aren’t allowed to wear any clothes, not even swimwear. This takes a little getting used to…

So anyways, one of the things to do in Japan in the winter is to go and sit in one of these hot spring baths with the snow falling around looking all pretty and stuff (the snow I mean, I’m not that narcissistic).

Anyways, it was nice! But no photos, for obvious reasons…