千人風呂

Sen-nin Buro; that's the "1,000-person bath" in Japanese, and that's where Yuko and I went this weekend. We had not been to an onsen (a hot spring) in almost 10 months, so we were long overdue. Unfortunately we forgot to take pictures while we were there, and they don't let you take pictures of the inside of the baths anyway, because of the sensitivities of your equally naked fellow bathers, so the only pictures we took were lame ones of us on the platform at the train station nearby. But, I downloaded a picture off their website!


The 1,000-person bath was towards the southern tip of the Izu Peninsula, southwest of Tokyo. It took 2.5 hours by train to get there - a long time when you think that it's probably less than 100 kilometers from my house. Roundtrip train ticket was about $100/person, and the price to stay in the cheapest room available was a bit over $150/person, including dinner and breakfast. Expensive, but it did not disappoint - the bath was huge, and the water was great. 5 meters wide by 15 meters long, and 1 meter deep for about half the width and the entire length of the bath, so you could actually swim up and down it (which I did, but just the breast stroke - the crawl would have annoyed the other bathers). It was so long, and it was so cold, that I could barely see the far side of the bath, because the room filled with steam from the hot water and the cold air. And when my glasses would fog up I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. The bath had scalding hot sections for those (like myself) who like to cook themselves in their onsen, and cooler sections where you could refresh yourself, or gradually work your way up to the hotter parts of the bath.

The food was also fantastic, but only if you like fish - great sashimi including lobster, abalone, toro and aji, broiled fish (mostly aji), poached fish with a dill cream sauce, fish cakes, and a nabe (a clear-broth stew) with snapper and oysters. Yuko and I stuffed ourselves. The only downside of this place was the scenery - nothing to write home about, although splotches of red and yellow dotted the hillsides surrounding the town. There is probably a week or two of pretty fall colors left in Japan before winter really sets in. But no one comes here for the scenery anyway - they come to soak and scarf.

Anyway, for those who are interested, here is the link:

http://www.shimoda-onsen.or.jp/yado/kanaya.html

As much as Yuko and I liked this onsen, though, I have to say that eastern Izu is a bit dull, and the town of Shimoda in particular (the biggest town near this onsen), is about as depressing a tourist destination as you will find, and that's saying something, as they usually come pretty depressing in Japan. In my experience it was only surpassed in tedium and depression by Gero-onsen, in Gifu; luckily we only spent a few minutes there before fleeing to our onsen, outside the town. You have to go to a few of these places to understand what I'm talking about - most of them are onsen towns, built up in the 1950s and 60s, crowded with ugly cement hotels and cheesy tourist draws. They catered to a different era, when the only vacation option for people in Tokyo was to pack themselves into standing room only trains with 10,000 other vacationers going to these types of towns. This was before many people had cars, and international travel was rare. Now, when people want to go to an onsen, they really want to get away, to be surrounded by natural beauty and trees and mountains while they bathe, not be stuck in some smoky, grimy bath on the 15th floor of a rundown hotel in a rundown town. And that's the kind of town Shimoda is.

When you get off the train in Shimoda, you are faced with a shabby looking station, the highlight of which is an omiyage (gift) shop full of the same, tired cookies and snacks that everyone brings home from their weekend trips to their co-workers in Japanese offices. There were a few local foods that were interesting - smoked and dried fish, crackers made from fish bones (sounds awful, but they're surprisingly good!), but that's about it. Once you get 100 yards or so from the station it's just boarded up old houses and gray, cracked cement hotels and restaurants. Every now and then you are surprised to see a decent looking house not in disrepair. The highlights of kicking around the town for Yuko and I were seeing a bar called the "Klazy Horse" and a sign on a person's house that said (in big English letters) "HE BITES YOU! DON'T TOUCH HIM!" After reading the Japanese it was clear this was meant to refer to the owner's dog. During our walk we stopped for a lunch of some udon noodles in a restaurant that was really more of the living room of someone's house. While the lady who ran the place was making our lunch, different neighbors would poke their heads in and give her messages or just shoot the breeze.

Anyway, hope you are all well - leave comments!