White guy – and gal – in an Onsen

A Ryokan

One of the things that every tourist to Japan is told that they simply must do is go to an onsen or stay at a ryokan. Both of these names perhaps need to be explained to the layperson otherwise unfamiliar.

An onsen is in essence a hot springs bathhouse. I sure you can google and find a plethora of other more detailed explanations, but in essence the Japanese have a long tradition of loving going and sitting in baths which are filled by hot springs. Some are the hot springs themselves as well. If I am remembering things correctly somewhere in the countries history there was a lack of hot water to bath in your house (actually, this history probably goes to before we had gas furnaces and running water!). The result was people would go to the hot springs to have endless hot water baths. This evolved into baths, where the water was trapped into a, or filled into a, bath. This way everyone can have a bath with endless hot water and. Depending on the hot spring source of the water as well, some hot spring baths claim to have special medicinal capabilities as a result of their salt and mineral composition. On this point I’ll let you believe as much as you want to. Some baths are indoors, others are outdoors as well. Also, some onsen will have both indoor and outdoor baths.

Historically these places have also been used as a great gathering place for people to be able to chat with other like minded onsen users. So culturally they have really slotted themselves into people’s lives.

Now if you’re going to share your ‘bath’ with a whole bunch of other people, no one wants the water to be dirty! And so the rituals of cleaning before going into the baths has been created as well. Being very clean before you hope in is to be respectful to your fellow bathers. So first one must have a really good scrub before one hopes into the bath. There also seems to have developed a process whereby you scrub, then hop in, then shortly thereafter hope out and scrub even more thoroughly, then hop in for as long as you want. When leaving you may or may not wash again, depending on whether or not the water’s medicinal properties require it to stay on the body afterwards or not. More on this later.

A Ryokan is in essence a traditional Japanese hotel built around an onsen. So the ryokan will have the onsen as part of its grounds. The idea is you are a guest of the ryokan and you have access to their special onsen. Part of the tradition involves traditional Japanese rooms, wearing traditional robes and slippers and eating traditional meals. Of course every time I say traditional this is pretty much business as usual for the ethnic, and an ‘experience’ for the tourists! Hence why its always raved about.

Both places have a countless number of nuanced rules and procedures which must be passed on from generation to generation, or maybe Japanese are just born with this knowledge, like an aussie knows to swim at the beach and do donuts in the dirt in their fathers falcon/commodore. For the tourist, you get to research and learn about all of this prior to your visit – lest you look like a total boob!

Some great resources to learn more about both of these places can be found here and here.

So we decided that as an early birthday present for your writer we shall head off for a long weekend away and stay at a Ryokan before my new job started. We choose to stay at a place in the Hakone region, which is a local ‘retreat’ area around 90 minutes by train from Tokyo. Its by a lake (Lake Asahi) with some lovely mountains and other natural features. There is a cable car, ropeway, funky train which climbs up a mountain using turns so tight is sprays water on the tracks to stop them overheating as the train turns, and well.. a sulfur mine which stinks to the high heavens and pretty much makes a mess of one side of one of the mountains. But where there are hundreds of hot springs popping up your going to have some sulfur! Comes with the territory. The good thing is – at least for the ryokan that we went to – the water is often diverted form the source, so you don’t have to have the super smelling sulfur experience is you don’t want to. But if that is your thing I’m sure you can still find those as well.

We arrived for our night at the ryokan and were greeting warmly by the front desk. English wasn’t even at 2/10 for those at the front desk, but as soon as we walked in they called our name as if having previously known us. As we would learn later in our trip, being the only westerns checked into the entire establishment for the evening was helpful, making the fair skinned duo darkening their doorstep as easy to match up with the booking make using English.

Once we were checked in and the process for dinner and breakfast were explained (a 10 course traditional ryokan dinner was to by served in our room from 6:30pm and breakfast was a buffet on level 2 from 7am) we were guided to what would be the waiting area at any western hotel. A lovely lady was there with “fermented sour grape juice with ice’ for us to have (a tradition of ryokan was that you have a drink in your room on arrival. As this was a larger establishment they served it in the lobby once you had checked in). As were sitting drinking what tasted to my western palate as a mix of ribena, wine and vinegar chilled to just one step above adult slushy left uncovered to long, one of the people from the front desk came over with a full 4 page picture guide as to how to use the onsen. There was some poorly constructed English directions that went along with the pictures, but you really were using the pictures more than anything. It was a very nice touch, and instead of making you feel like you were imposing on centuries of Japanese tradition, it made us feel welcome. Indeed the whole time we only ever had the impression they wanted us to experience this traditional way of life and thoroughly enjoy it. No negativity at all. .

We went to our room, which was as described – traditional Japanese – huge, and featuring a natural cedar bathtub and views of the mountains. It was a lovely room and very luxurious. This was perhaps in part the design, and our last minute booking meaning we had what was far from the lowest end type of room.

Bathing at the Onsen

Once in the room we read through our little guide on how to use the onsen (which actually was also hanging framed in the change room as well it turned out) and how to put on our robe. You see once you are at your ryokan you pretty much slip into the traditional Japanese robe and slippers and stay in that for the rest of the trip. I will also admit we went a little nuts with the first bit of wifi that was free that we had experience on our trip. It was something which we relished just as much as anything else.

Once we were ready, and fully prepared psychologically for what we were about to do, we headed in our robes to the onsen. Once we were outside the doors we had another handy service just for us – signs also in English for gentlemen and women. Very handy because they change sides daily so that everyone gets to experience the different set up that is available on either side.

Whilst some hot springs are for both sexes, I understand more separate (though generally if they are large outdoor baths that can’t be separated they are often coed).

From here we were both on our own. Once your inside there is a lovely change area with tatami mats (you take your shoes off before the tatami mat flooring), with storage baskets for clothes as well as all the hair and hygiene products you may need to get yourself respectable for your departure (as a guy you don’t need to feel obliged to use the hair straighter, they do swap the sides after all so the set up is for both sexes to say changing anything unnecessarily).

At the storage baskets you exchange your clothes for a small ‘privacy towel’. Lets not kid ourselves here – this isn’t a privacy towel. Just because you call something something doesn’t mean it is that something. It’s a hand towel. There is no special size of towel which makes it a privacy towel. Its just a hand towel that you would normally have in your house for drying your hands. Whether it is a hand towel for some and a privacy towel for others we wont enter into. I’m just trying to give you an idea of its size.

Once you are relieved of your robe and have acquired your towel you can head off into the baths. Once you enter – at least in this case – there were two walls with little stools on the floor and low set shower handles. One takes a seat at a free seat (there are no dividers so you just spot an empty stool and … pull up a stool. There is shampoo, conditioner and body wash all there, as well as a mirror. So you hose down, turn of the water and give yourself a good lather up, before hosing down once more. This done you have a choice of two baths – one indoor and one outdoor (plus a Jacuzzi and a sauna as well). One of the big reasons we went for this place was the outdoor area and the fact it was around 5 degrees at the time, so it was one of those great hot-and-cold experiences that you can have (and much like the one that I had in Banff when it was minus 15 and my hair froze).

Word of warning – the water is HOT, DAM HOT. I think it is almost like a test of your personal fortitude to see how long you can stay in it. Being outside helps as you can have the cold air on your face and part of your body if you slowly rise up and down in the water trying to regulate your temperature! Once I had been in for a few minutes and it was time to shower again I turned that water all the way down trying to freeze myself as much as humanly possible (oh wow, and look it becomes a privacy towel) so that I could last in the bath longer for phase two. I found a great spot outside that wasn’t to deep and hung around there for a good half an hour.

Having done that I have to say that it is a wonderfully relaxing experience. Much better then I thought it would be. The water actually did have some cool mineral properties such that my skin felt really nice afterwards, and I was feeling pretty mellow as well for a travelled wearied tourist experiencing the strange world of ryokan. It is wonderfully relating to be outside with the waterfall, the hot water the rocky pool, the beautiful gardens to look at.

Once your done you head out, use your hand towel to get excess water off yourself before heading back into the change area where you can grab your towel and dry off and dress again.

Dinner at the Ryokan

Dinner served in your room at a ryokan is another one of those experiences which you have to do once. Just once though mind you. Have the experience and call it quits at that point I say! It was 10 courses of food. I was full after 2, and then the thought of another 8 was terrifying. The food is absolutely local cuisine all done up 100% as a local would want to have a traditional meal. It included whole-cooked small fish, which were baked in a salt crust and served whole. Once is meant to eat the whole thing but those bits that we traditionally cut out and throw away – they are bitter and gross and impossible to swallow! Sorry, tried, left me with a permanent facial twitch trying a little. The flesh was extraordinary and so amazingly tasty though. There was home made tofu, special rise, two soups (one of which was a frightening slimy consistency that had the gag reflex hitting high notes by swallow number two), local caught sashimi (which was AMAZING) and for us, a beef pot pie, which was made by someone that had seen a photo of the outside of a beef pot pie but didn’t know what should be inside, so included things which should never had found there way into a pot pie.

The food – all of which is in photos for you to see was simply extraordinary. No doubt an enormous amount of effort went into the whole preparation and for that I think it is well worth experiencing. But it’s an elephantine amount of food, many items of which were seriously foreign to our palate and its knowledge of taste and consistency and texture. I would write more, but I think the photos pretty much sum up that part of the experience. As you can imagine you don’t really photo the onsen experience…

In the end we had 3 trips to the onsen in our stay, and got more and more into the whole experience each time. Their amazing ability to make you relax is something I was not expecting given the nature of the experience, but it was really one of the more unique and memorable experiences I’ve had on the trip – one which we will repeat sometime soon no doubt.

Related articles

• The etiquette of Japanese onsen (leggotunglei808.wordpress.com)
• Here we go a-onsen-ing (changehere.wordpress.com)