Onsen conversations
I’ve been going to onsen (hot springs) when I can, because onsens are the freaking best. Hot baths are the number one thing I missed when I moved back to the U.S. in 2000. Yeah, I know, bathtubs exist, but we just don’t do it right. Not enough hot water, too hard to get the temperature right, tub’s not deep enough, tap doesn’t fill it fast enough, no way to shower outside the tub, etc etc etc.
In my experience, onsens are places where you wander around naked and ignore everyone else, but then in the last two days I’ve had two naked conversations with random strangers. (So maybe I was doing it wrong before?)
One was talking about the pilgrimage with another random stranger, and somehow I got looped into this conversation. It turned out she’s on her 11th (!) round, all by car - she has a bad knee, she said, so she’s not up to walking. Car is the normal way to do the pilgrimage for Japanese people. And she pointed out that there’s still a lot of climbing if you drive! We commiserated about the bonkers climb up to temple #45 from the parking lot. #12 is rough, too, she said, and #27 is a terrifyingly narrow road, which I noticed when I walked up there - I thought that I was definitely glad to be walking, hot and humid and steep as it was, rather than driving.
As always, we had the basic communication problem that I know the temples by number and Japanese people know them by name. But we got there.
That conversation was in the outdoor-ish bath in one of the annexes at Dogo Onsen, a famous historic onsen in Matsuyama. This is what the main hall (not the one where we were) looks like.
Then this afternoon (Friday 4/10) I went to a modern onsen near the Imabari train station. I really liked it - no historic character at all but it had a bunch of different baths you could try out and several old ladies there for their pre-dinner baths, and I reflected, as I soaked in the carbonated water (why carbonation? who knows!) of one of those baths, that I’d spent nearly $100 each for Daniel and me to go to one of the big Korean baths in northern Virginia earlier this year, while this lovely bath had set me back a little over $4. Which included an after-bath beverage.
A woman who was vaguely my age suggested I try the “electric bath” next to hers - I’d been avoiding it because (1) water and electricity, what, no and (2) it had a warning with a long list of people who shouldn’t use it, which I couldn’t read, but just its existence was enough for me. But hey, she was friendly, so I spent some time getting zapped (why) by electric shocks (again, why) while chatting. It turns out her daughter is getting married on Sunday at the local castle and she asked if I was going to be around (I’m not, I move on tomorrow morning) and I’m pretty sure she was going to invite me if I was going to still be in town. I was like, yay, wedding, that’s so great, are you excited?? And she was like, ugh, putting on a kimono is so mendokusai (a wonderful Japanese word that approximately means “a total pain”). Ha!
In my regular life I don’t have a lot of conversations with total strangers, even clothed ones. It’s so easy to strike up conversations here, though. When I have on pilgrim clothes, there’s an obvious topic to talk to me about. And then there’s a whole conversation to be had about why my Japanese is so good, and then sometimes we need to talk about America (summary of my viewpoint on America: I don’t know, man, I don’t get it, either).
Among pilgrims, once you see someone a couple of temples in a row we’ll usually say hi - or for a fellow foreigner, usually the first time. That’s how, at temple #55 this morning, I ended up being a translator for a two guys, from Japan and Lithuania. When I’m around, even my shoddy translation offers Japanese people the unique opportunity to ask a fellow pilgrim - whether it’s me or another nearby foreigner - questions beyond “where are you from?” It was really fun to try to explain this Lithuanian’s reasons for doing the pilgrimage in Japanese.
I was surprised to learn it was the Japanese guy’s first pilgrimage. I think he’s only the second Japanese pilgrim I’ve met who’s on their first round! They all seem to be on their 5th, or 7th, or 13, or I-don’t-know-I-lost-count-th. Some do it twice a year. He’s 66, which counts as young for Japanese pilgrims. I believe I understood him correctly when he said he’d met four different 85-year-olds. Doing the pilgrimage on foot!
So. Clothes on tomorrow, for two to four temples depending on how far I get…and whether an onsen distracts me on the way.