18th November - Time to get naked!!!

After a little visit from Kat last weekend, I decided to go check out her corner of the paddy field in a village called Asashina in Saku City. Having just been paid I thought nothing of jumping on the shink and was there in 20minutes flat. I picked up some weekend supplies from the supermarket (Chu Hai's, red wine, crisps and chocolate centred koala biscuits) and then in very broken Japanese gave a taxi driver directions to Kat's rice paddy. She has a lovely little bungalow complete with wooden floors, 3 tatami mat rooms and open plan kitchen. Her toilet and sink are nowhere even near her kitchen - very lucky! Having said that, she is miles from civilisation, gets woken by a rice paddy workers alarm at 6 EVERY morning - that is if the cockerels haven't got in first, has 4 buses a day do pick-ups at a stop 20mins walk from her house and I'm pretty sure the temperature dropped to about minus 20 degrees during the night. She sent me to bed with a wooly hat and I thought she was joking... but she wasn't. Any other JETs reading - it's definitley the coldest place in Nagano!

The next morning, Kat agreed to take me to my first onsen in her village. Having been able to avoid it for the last 4 months, the sheer chill in my bones was enough to make me jump at the chance to spend the morning relaxing in a hot tub - regardless of the fact I would be completely naked with a bunch of strangers. Naked. So, basically here's what you do. You walk into a changing room where you take off ALL of your clothes and don't even get a towel to hide in. You then stand completely naked until your friend/mother/sister/grandmother/child is ready and you walk into a large comunal shower (via a room where fully clothed people are putting on makeup and drying their hair). You grab a stool and sit down in front of a shower and scrub yourself clean from head to eh... toe. Once you're clean, you're free to'go onsen'.

Maybe I should have mentioned this earlier but the onsens are split into two - one for men and one for women. The showers are quite big, I think there were maybe 6 or 7 other women there but I didn't lift my head long enough to count them. Kat and I then moved through the glass doors so we were outside in the fresh air. Naked, still naked. You have to resist the urge to run to the onsen and hide in the water, so that you can delicately climb into the rock pools filled with hot water and natural minerals. In this particular onsen there is a lovely waterfall trickling into pool and there are beautiful golden trees surrounding you. Of course, none of this meant anything to me becuase now I was trying to sit in the CLEAR and relatively still water in the most optimum concealing position - which I found out is impossible when you are NAKED!!!

The whole thing was very relaxing but the water is pretty hot so we didn't stay for long. It is hard to get over the naked thing, especially when you see two old ladies scrubing each others backs (it's a sign of friendship) in the showers next to you. But, glad I did it and will definitely go back again. I felt squeaky clean afterwards too!