mercredi, novembre 17, 2004 Today, Mei Yen kindly took a day off (her once-a-month Personal Retreat Day under JCCC orders) and took me to Okutama, which is about 1.5hrs out of Mitaka. It's gorgeous! About an hour out of the city, and we were in mountain ranges already - with the gorgeous leaf colours. Leaves in Singapore have nothing compared to what temperate climates have - the leaves turn a million different shades of yellow, red, orange - God's creation and His spectrum of colours were truly fully used in all the trees I saw today! Beautiful stuff! We hiked a little bit as we walked around the very picturesque town, crossed a couple of bridges, and had lunch beside a river - we took off our shoes and socks, rolled up our jeans, and walked in the icy-cold water - another [insert superlative-adjective here] experience. My feet were numb after about 2 seconds in the water - Mei Yen actually walked about 20 steps before declaring surrender.All this before arriving at our intended destination: the onsen. For those who don't know, the onsen is like a jacuzzi - except everyone's wearing their birthday suits instead of speedos. It's gender-segregated, so it's not x-rated, ad it's an experience that I highly recommend anyone who comes to Japan to try at least once. The onsen which we went to made us remove our shoes before the front desk (individual lockers), pay at the front desk (Y650, or about SGD$10), where they gave us a locker key which we could use to keep our bags and stuff. We headed down towards the lockers, which was in a part of the onsen already gender-segregated. There, what you do is strip to the skin and put everything but your facial wash (and a towel to scrub, which I didn't have) into the locker, and go into another glass-partitioned room, which has a sit-down shower - think of a row of showerheads and taps all in a row, except at knee-height. This onsen provides body soap and shampoo, so we didn't need to bring them. You sit on a stool they have, and shower beside everyone else, then you get into one of the hot baths that they have in that room already. When you're ready for something new, you go OUTSIDE - yes, into the cold - and sit in another hot tub they have there. I thought the place would be quite empty, seeing that it wasn't really in town, nor was it a weekend, but it was pretty packed today: plenty of hikers and oba-sans (old aunties) taking a muscle-relaxing soak, I guess. The water's hot - 40degC, but pretty great once you're into it. I was surprised that it wasn't hotter - I've gone into jacuzzis which really boiled my skin red, so I was rather pleasantly surprised that the water was a good temperature. I think we spent slightly over an hour in the onsen, and then we had to catch our train back to Mitaka. That was enough time for me to feel uncomfortably warm in the onsen - almost enough to start perspiring, so Mei Yen had a quick dessert in the cafeteria, and left to catch our train. When I was in Nagoya in 2002, one of my fellow mission-trippers got us a dessert called Yuki Ichigo Mosume (Xue Mei Niang), and it was so wonderful that I told Mei Yen that I had to try some again this trip. So we made a stop at Tachigawa, a transfer station along the way back, visited the shop (inside the station) to get some of this wonderful dessert. It's something like a pau, except with thin flour skin on the outside, cream, and a strawberry on a bed of sponge cake. Heavenly. Ayumi (one of Mei Yen's roommates) was extremely delighted when I told her that I had bought a few for our dessert tonight - she was so happy, and kept making happy noises, which was extremely amusing, and shared her joy well. We came back to a comedy of errors dinner - Ayumi had threatened me with a natto maki dinner (that is, smelly yellow beans wrapped in a sushi roll) the night before, and both Mei Yen and I were under the impression that she was going to make good on her threat. She, on the other hand, thought that she would spare me, since I made faces at the sound of the word natto, having been subjected to its strong flavour before at Nagoya. So we came back, expecting if not natto, at least maki, but there was only ramen, which hadn't been cooked. So we had to run out and get some stuff to make it a full meal - we had bought 5 delicious sticks of yakitori chicken earlier, which made our clothes smell, but it wasn't enough. We finally sat down to dinner at about 1945hrs, and watched Japan trash Singapore in a soccer match 1-0. (But we couldn't shout as loudly as the TV as I would have liked, since this is Japan and the walls are paper thin.) Tomorrow, there's nothing on my agenda except pack my bag in a way that will best cushion my one precious bottle of Kirin afternoon milk tea (I don't see it in Singapore, but I have to admit I've not looked very hard), and how to carry my paper umbrella back to Singapore without getting it confiscated in customs. But I figured if Uma Thurman could carry a freaking SWORD back from Japan, why can't I carry a plain, harmless umbrella? (What am I supposed to do with it anyway? Open it on the plane? *gasp* *shock* *horror*) [Tokyo, Japan: Day 6] |
0 Comments: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
