Ambling along, smelling the roses…

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.

It’s still pretty early in the season, so there aren’t very many guests at Villa Nozawa at the moment.  So my job now is a little different to what it will be.  Besides breakfasts and the occasional room change, we’re pretty much just getting ready for the season.  So lots of airing out rooms and airing doonas that have been in storage all summer.  Cleaning futons and windows.  We’ve also been doing the same at Lodge Nagano, Mark’s other lodge.  It’s not open just yet, but it’s getting closer.

There’s also the new cottage.  The builders are still kind of doing their thing, so we’re mainly just pulling up floor coverings and vacuuming and then vacuuming again.  And again.  We’ll be putting the furniture in soon.  It’s going to be fantastic and right across from the gondola.

It’ll all change though, so they tell me, on about December 20th when it really gets going.  So it will be busy very soon.

I left Tokyo today and headed to Nozawa Onsen, where’d I’d be working for three months.  An hour on the Nagano Shinkansen, another hour on the local train, fifteen minutes on the local bus.

I met an Australian girl, Kat, on the bus, which was really good.  She showed me how to get to the Villa, which was awesome, because I’d gotten off at the wrong stop and had no idea where I was.  Seems silly in a village so small, but anyway.

I met Luke, his sister Renee and his girlfriend Mariko at the Villa.  It was good, they showed me the attic room where I’d stay and then Luke drove me around town for the grand tour.  It’s so pretty!  We’re the only staff so far, and I think there was maybe one guest, so they were mainly cleaning and getting ready for the start of the season.

Before I went on to Nozawa Onsen, I spent a week in Tokyo and Yokosuka.  It’s always fun in Tokyo – I went to all my favourite places – but it was weird (ok, lonely and quite boring) to do it by myself.  But even despite this, I will always adore Harajuku and my new favourite shop, Forever 21.

A weird discovery from my week was the fact that Odaiba (the outlet mall island built on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay) was actually reclaimed using big piles of … garbage.  Odd, but I guess that’s pretty good recycling.

I also spent a couple of nights in Yokosuka and caught up with the Nishiie’s.  I did alot of wandering around town and they took me to the Paddington Bear theme park.  It would have been absolute rubbish if it weren’t for the “Christmas Illuminations”, which essentially meant that the entire place was draped in fairy lights.  Fairly effective when it’s an entire hill.

Well, I have to be honest.  My first night in Japan was quite depressing.  All that travelling made me realise that whenever I’ve done it before, I’ve always been with someone and even just that made everything more exciting.

But it’ll get better.

Sometimes it seems like all I ever do is save, then go to Japan, save, then go to Japan.

Once again, I’m nearly at the “go to Japan” stage.  Yay.  I leave in one month today, to spend almost three months working at a ski resort in beautiful Nozawa Onsen, Nagano.  It’s going to be fairly amazing.

Some video.  Can’t remember how to embed it properly, so just a link. 

Nozawa Onsen clip

Shall be splendid.  I have a few days in my own in Tokyo (shopping, naturally), then a few more days visiting my friends in Yokosuka and then its off to Nagano.  Can’t wait!

Click it… you know you want to.