JapanNewbie

Onsen Trip

Posted on 23. Oct, 2003 @ 11:58 pm by harvey in Culture Views: 305

Onsen Vacations

A few weekends ago I went to Kinosaki with some friends for an extended weekend. Went went there for the purpose of going to hot springs, which, I have done before so I didn’t think it was such a big deal. Kinosaki is a few hours from Osaka by train. The trip was nice, so I would recommend it to anyone who is going to be in the kansai area with extra time.

First of all, everyone who got off the train at Kinosaki station was there for the sole purpose of going to onsen. I mean Everyone. When we got to the station there was a free bus that would drive around the city and take people to different ryokans, Japanese style inns. We got out of the bus and got changed and ready to hit the onsen. There was one right inside of the ryokan so it was very convienent. After we did that for a while, my friends told me that we were gonna go around town and hit another one.

(Actually a naked man in the first onsen with me recommended that I check out other places as well… naked man to man onsen talks are always fun.)

Foot only Onsen, Ashiyu

Another onsen? We just finished one though… Another surprise was that everyone left the room in their inn provided yukata’s. You know, those stylish cotton bathrobes that foreigners love so much. At the front of the inn there were “geta”, Japanese wooden sandels, for everyone, so we put those on and clomped our way outside.

Once we got outside I was surprised to see that nearly everyone out on the street was dressed the same as us. Yukata, geta, towels in hand. Everyone was getting ready to hit the next onsen just like us! We continued our onsen romp and went to about three different places. I’m not sure what the deal is with that… I don’t think that the water quality was any different between the different onsens…

I guess it is just fun to walk between the different buildings. It was cloudy that day, so it was interesting going from steaming hot onsen to slightly chilly night air over and over again. I was told that people even do the same in the winter.

After all those onsen visits it was -very- easy to sleep once we got back to the inn. Super relaxed.

This has been an especially cheesy journal entry, but with some decent pictures to make up for it.

Thank you beri macchi.

Oh yeah. There’s this lame game where you shoot things down to win prizes all over this town. There is also a horizontal pachinko type game famous in the town as well.

-Harvey