General

Nozawa Onsen is such a gorgeous little village.  Because it’s an onsen (hot spring) village, there is water just running through all these special drains in town.  It’s amazing.  It was really quite disorienting the first few mornings, as I’d wake up thinking I could hear rain, but would then look out the window and realise that it was beautiful and sunny and it was just the drains I could hear. 

The onsens themselves are a huge part of the village – there’s 13 in total, one for each district of the village.  And in a village of just a few thousand people, that’s quite a concentration.

The main street is really cute, lots of souvinery shops.  These are open only during the ski season, so it must be a bit of a ghost town during summer.  There’s a supermarket, convenience store and meat shop too.

In a stroke of sheer genius, the roads are all heated with kerosene, which means that the roads stay free of snow and, more importantly, ice.
Besides the main road, Nozawa also has an army of insanely cheap, delicious restaurants and another army of lodges.
It’s a tiny, absolutely gorgeous town, with the mountain rising up behind it.  Beautiful.

This is so depressing. I am now sick for the third time since I got here.

So over it.

After my amazing day at Karasawa, I decided I was an idiot.  I hadn’t really ventured very far in my skiiing

attempts. By which, of course, I mean I skiied the same run over and over.  I think this was mainly because I am an unbelievable wuss.  I’d heard that the course (Uenotaira) was the easiest, so I stayed well and truly within my comfort zone.

As soon as I realised I’d been behaving so pathetically I decided that by the time Dad arrived on February 12, I’d have skiied every green run on the mountain.  I had 12 ski-able days left and 15 runs to ski.

So, today in my five hour midday break I did 9 of them.  And it was fantastic!  Another totally deserted, beautiful clear day.  Just perfect.  My skiing continued to improve (hurrah!) and I think I fully appreciated for the first time just how stunningly beautiful the mountain is.  So, my mission now is to ski as much as I possibly can and to be a better skiier than day, for the first couple of hours at least. [click to continue...]

The Fire Festival in Nozawa Onsen is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen.

It involves the 21(?) year old men and 42 year old men from the village, as these are supposed to be unlucky years.

A few days before the festival, the 21 year olds bring down trees from the mountain and built a big temple looking thing.  On the night of January 15, all the 42 year old men sat on top, while the younger men had to defend it from the rest of the villagers.

The tricky part lies in the fact that the young men are defending their temple with branch-like things, while the rest of the villagers are attacking with similar branches, but which have been set on fire.

So yes.  Going to watch the fire festival pretty much involves watching a bunch of guys getting the absolute bajeezus beaten out of them by the rest of the town.  With firey torches, no less.  And everyone is hugely drunk on sake, just to make it an extra challenge.

After a certain amount of time, one of the older men – presumably with some sort of authority – call it off.  At this point, the young men are untied from the temple, the older men climb down from the top and then the entire thing is burned down.

It is without a doubt the most insane thing I’ve ever seen.  Very dangerous – there were sirens going all night – and really just mental.

But mindblowingly amazing at the same time.

Click here for an awesome video.

I went back to the town office today and picked up my Alien Registration card.

I am now officially an alien!  And I have a card to prove it.  Although I did manage to resist writing “Mars” as my home country.

New Years Eve in Japan was AMAZING.  It’s the biggest holiday over there – way bigger than Christmas (which, incidently is celebrated with pictures of Santa and cake).

To begin with, I went to the Stay Bar with Mark 2, Renee, Luke, Kat the Guest (there were 3 Kat’s) and her fiancee.  It was fun for a while, but the whole “You should be drinking.  Why aren’t you drinking?” routine got old after a couple of hours, so I went back to the Villa and sat in the dining room reading a book.  It sounds really lame, but I also overheard one of the funniest conversations of all time.  A group of young kids (aged 6 through to about 14) were watching a movie and some of the older ones had decided that as it was New Years Eve they ought to buy a can of alcohol from the vending machine (it’s Japan – this is totally possible.  Illegal, but possible).  They discussed it for maybe 20 minutes, how they would definitely do it, how cool they were, how they hoped their parents wouldn’t find out.  But when it came to actually getting the money and putting it in the machine, they couldnt’ do it.  To start, everyone had money, but noone was willing to spend it.  And even if they did want to spend it, noone was willing to do the actual buying.  After another ten minutes of this, they went back to their movie.  It was truly hilarious.

By then it was almost midnight, so I went up to the Nagasaka Gondola to watch the fireworks.  It was insane.  I think the health and safety rules are alot more relaxed in Japan – the fireworks were being set off so close to the crowd that when they exploded it seemed like they were coming down on top of you.  It was really, really neat.

Afterwards, I followed the crowd to the temple, where I waited in line for ages to even get up the stairs.  When I was finally in, I met up with Kat, Jan, Manuel and Anders.  I waited in line with them and then we each had a turn at ringing the temple bell (a traditional Japanese New Year thing to do).  Best NYE ever. 

Christmas Day in Nozawa Onsen was… odd.  It didn’t feel like Christmas.  I worked in the morning, of which I spent a significant portion of my first white Christmas shovelling snow.  Then I went skiing in the middle of the day, worked again in the evening and went out for dinner with all of the staff and a few of the guests.  Fun, but not exactly Christmassy.

One of the highlights of Nozawa Onsen is, as the name suggests, the onsens.  The onsens are basically hot springs – hot water comes up from the ground all over town.  The town has done something clever so that this water is funnelled into specially made pools.  There are cooking onsens (one over 90degC), private bathing ones in hotels and (best of all) public bathing onsens.  There are 13 free public onsens across town, one for each district of town that owns and maintains them.  They’re pretty awesome – very traditional and Japanese-y.

How To Guide to Onsen-ing

When you first walk in, take your shoes off before you step up onto the wooden dressing area.  Then you put your shoes in the bottow shelf of the pigeon hole.  Undress, putting all your clothes in a higher pigeon shelf.  Take your soap and towel, which you’ve brought with you, and take a bucket, which is provided.  Then step down onto the tiled area  around the bath.  Scoop water directly out of the pool and splash it onto the tiles.  Take a seat, soap up and rinse off using your bucket.  Don’t get any soap in the onsen!  Tip more water over you and try to get a bit acclimatised.  Once you’re clean and soap-free get into the tup.  They’re hot – usually between 40 and 50 degC.  But so, so good.

You can get in and out as many times as you like, wash your hair or whatever.  Once you’re done, wring out the towel you used to wash yourself and use it to get most of the water off your body.  Then step back onto the wooden dressing area and use your towel to dry off properly, if you have a proper towel, get dressed and don’t forget to wait to get off the wooden area before you put your shoes back on.

Hurrah!  Onsens!

The first time I went was really daunting.  Renee took me down to one – I was a bit scared to go by myself.  But it wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d been expecting.  After the first few visits I got over the whole naked thing – noone’s looking at you, so it’s just your own insecurities to deal with.  But once I realised that noone was looking or (more importantly) judging me it became a really positive experience and made me more comfortable with myself.  Definately a fantastic experience, but it did seem a bit odd to be having a bath, naked, with a girl I’d only met two hours before.