Day 37 - Feb 12

So yesterday was quite the experience!  Li and I went to an onsen in Odaiba and stayed overnight.  An onsen is a hot-spring and Odaiba is a man-made island off the coast near Tokyo.  The place is called Ooedo-onsen Monogatari, and it is a period-themed onsen (english website: http://www.ooedoonsen.jp/higaeri/english/ ).
Since this was a very traditional onsen there was no mixed bathing, though there is much to do outside of the baths which is not gender separated.  Also, being a traditional onsen, everyone must be completely nude in the bathing areas.  You are allowed to bring in a small hand-towel, but you aren't supposed to let it touch the water.  Basically, this towel can be used for covering yourself up as you walk around.  I was quite surprised how quickly you get used to being completely naked around other completely naked men.  The whole atmosphere was just very comfortable.  No one stares, you're all just there to relax, so being nervous/making others nervous is greatly inhibiting to that relaxation.  Plus, as soon as you get into the first bath you just don't care about anything anymore.  I can really understand how this became such an integrated part of their culture.

When you arrive you choose a yukata to wear, which (aside from underwear) you will wear only that while on the premises (and outside of the baths).  Yukata: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukata
I really need to find a yukata before I go home, b/c that thing was so comfortable.  I don't think I'll ever wear my robe again if I have one of those.  For obvious reasons I don't have pictures of inside the onsen, but if you go to their website (which I linked above) you can see what the inside of the place looks like.

So yea, there were originally other people that were going to come with us, but they ended up dropping out, so it was just Li and I on a completely heterosexual date :P  I mentioned before that we stayed the night.  This is a 24 hour onsen, the open-air baths close at midnight and re-open at 5am, but the indoor baths are open from 10am-8am (2 hours for cleaning).  While they do have a few rooms available, only big parties use those, everyone else just goes to the recliner room.  You can see pictures on their website, but it is a room filled with really comfortable recliners, each with their own little TV attached and speakers mounted inside the headrest so you don't disturb other people.  Well, Li and I arrived at the onsen at about 8pm.  We got ourselves checked in and immediately checked out the outdoor baths.  After checking out some of the indoor ones, we then went on to get some food at one of the many food stalls in the main room.  The highlight of this food was the beef hot pot, which was awesome, but there was also some yakitori and sake.  After eating, it was about 23:15, so we headed out to the open-air baths one more time before they closed.  While we were in there, we decided to check out this one really interesting bath they have.  It is straight, unfiltered hot-spring water and has a "molten copper" color (or so says the website).  Well, it was definitely a solid copper color.  I didn't understand the "molten" part until we got in it though.  Dear god, that was the hottest thing I have ever been in in my life.  The temperature gauge said it was 50 degrees Celsius.  Max amount of time I was able to stay in there was 20 minutes.  When we got out, not only did we look like partially cooked lobster, but we smelled like it.  So anyways, at about 00:30 we plopped ourselves down into some recliners for 3 hours of rest before we wanted to get up and go back out to the baths.  The exhaustion made me pass out rather nicely, however due to my body being uncomfortable I got up after 30 minutes.  At this point, I remembered that I can't sleep sitting in a recliner, no matter how hard I try.  So I laid there for about 3 hours watching random anime that I didn't understand.  Some of it looked very interesting though.  Also, Hidamari Sketch looks like possibly the cutest thing in the world (I've watched it a few other times late-night here).

At 4am we finally got up and went back out to the baths for one last go.  We were in there until about 5am.  The biggest mistake I made was going straight into the "molten copper" bath without getting acclimated first.  The string of obscenities I let out around waist-deep was rather original.  The jacuzzi bath they had was absolutely wonderful (and a nice cool 40 degrees Celsius), and the perfect way to end our stay there.  We decided to head back after that bath and stop by the arcade that was on the way to the station.  On the way there we picked up some breakfast at a conbini, which was rather nice.  A big slab of fried chicken is possibly the greatest thing in the world at 5:30 after less than an hour of sleep.  The only bad part about this was that it was rather windy, cold, and slightly raining.  So we stopped at the arcade, played a round of the Gundam POD game, were very upset when we found out that since almost all arcades are closed at that hour the game's servers were down so none of our data was saved, then hopped on the train and finally got back to the dorms at about 7:00.

My intent was to sleep for only a few hours so I could get some work done before my 16:50 class.  Unfortunately, my body decided to sleep through my cell phone's weak alarm, so I got up at 15:40.  Remember now, it takes me an hour to get from my room to school.  I was less than pleased.  I did manage to get there on time though.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the part leading up to the onsen yesterday.  Outside the station was the place called "Palette Town" which had a mall and the Toyota Showcase.  The mall was really cool and themed like Venice (which they spelled Venus).  Especially cool were the ceilings, which were painted to look perfectly like the sky, and changed color to match the daylight outside.  The Toyota Showcase was also really cool, and some of the concept cars were really interesting, as well as the "fashion" cars.  Check my facebook for pictures of both these places.

Overall, it was an awesome trip.  Li and I have both said that we want to go back, and I know I'm definitely taking Tsuki here when she comes.  I highly recommend all of the above, the Toyota Showcase, the Venus Mall, and the Ooedo-onsen Monogatari to anyone who finds themselves in Japan, especially the Tokyo area.