Nuddhist Buddhist
...written on 11.03.01, @ 12:16 a.m.
Fri November 2, 2001 (Second entry)
This entry is a long one. It has tales of gluttony, drunkeness and nudity. What would a company trip be without them?
Monday morning, October 29th at 8:15 am, two Kintetsu tour buses loaded down with puffy eyed and yawning teachers, pulled out of our company parking lot and headed off on a 10 hour trip.
These buses come equipped with a tour guide whose job it is to jabber incessantly about the various mileposts along the way. We were all too sleepy to care, but our tour denizen kept cheerfully chatting on, oblivious of the 23 pairs of eyes shuttered against her white noise. Mine were so tightly shut as a matter of fact that I slept through our first rest stop, which was a mere 30 minutes out of the starting gate.
These kinds of tours are very popular and the places we stopped were equipped to handle a multitude of buses. We had lunch in a room that was set for 500 people. It was all seafood and I ate every bit of it! GASP! says Kim's parents. Yep, even that little bit of suction-cupped octopus made its way into my gullet.
After lunch we continued our journey, but added entertainment in the form of karaoke. John sang the only English song on our bus menu, which was the Elvis tune, "Love Me Tender". He sounded just like the King, too.
Around 3pm we stopped to see a waterfall. We didn't have much time to get close to it (pretty common in tours of this kind, very limited flexibility in the expenditure of time), but had a nice 30 minute walk through some lush forests. As usual, I snooped around the souvenir shops, but wasn't attracted by much. I did buy a prayer charm from the monk enclave shop there. One memory I have is of two monks in full regalia driving off in their Toyota Corolla. It just looked amusing. I mean, imagine the Pope driving himself around in a Beetle. I grin when I see them on bicycles too, but hey, when a monk's gotta go, a monk's gotta go!
We were due to arrive at the Urashima Hotel in Katsuura at 6:15 pm and our party was to start at 7:00. I had been plotting my avoid-getting-naked-with-my-co-workers strategy and felt like I had come up with a winner. I would get dressed in my yukata (cotton bathrobe), wet my hair and walk from the entrance of one onsen to another saying I had just been and what a wonderful experience it was and that I'd see them all later.
Imagine my surprise when my four other roomies suggested that we all go to the onsen TOGETHER . . . BEFORE dinner!
"Uh, " I whined weakly as I crinkled my brow, "I don't think there's enough time before the party." So, my roommates, thinking otherwise, left without me. Whew! That was easy. I jumped in the shower and got freshened up for the enkai (party) and was ready when Mayumi, Mika, Tomomi and the ex-Akasaka boss came back.
We went to the banquet hall and the festivities began. It was the job of the second year employees to command the tour logistics etc, but it was the freshmen's job to entertain the masses. I'm not sure what the dialogues were, but there was a lot of cross-dressing and in particular, one memorable mermaid-man. (I shall do my best to get pictures up here tomorrow.)
I was asked to give the toast (I wish they had let me know beforehand!) and after our hearty "kanpai!", beer flowed briskly and that sweetie Fred brought me two bottles of oolong tea. Hide sat next to me and ohhed and ahhed about how he didn't think I ate raw fish and stuff. "Do now, " I said, as I slurpped a stiff but succulent sliver of squid from my chopsticks to my lips. I grabbed a beer bottle, and holding it with both hands, as deemed by alcohol pouring etiquette, filled Hide's glass (it is very rude to have to pour your own drink too).
Interesting little factoid: More than half of people with strong Chinese, Japanese and Korean heritage have a slower than normal enzyme in their ethanol catabolism. It is called aldehyde dehydrogenase and it is responsible for the red flushed faces around a Japanese drinking table. For example, after only one or two drinks, Fred's face, neck and ears are as red as the sun on a Japanese flag. It doesn't mean they can't handle their liquor, but let me just say that Fred doesn't appear in many pictures at the party, cause he "left early".
Of course, what is a Japanese party without . . . karaoke! Sing, sing, sing, they all went and John closed the show with an acid version of "Come Together".
My roommies and I meandered back to our room. All of them fell down on freshly made futons and were groaning about how full they were, when in the very next breath they asked me if I was ready to go to the onsen. "Sure!" I chirped, "Let's go!" Funny, but it seems they were startled, albeit very pleased with my response. We changed into our yukatas, grabbed our towels and other shower/bath paraphernalia and went down the elevator to the onsens.
Japan is blessed with many natural hot springs and so a healthy industry has developed over the centuries that lets travelers find respite together in steaming pools of mineral water. Also, in the olden days, houses didn't have individual bathing facilities, so community baths flourished, which is one reason why the Japanese seem so comfortable with bathing together.
Part of the Urashima Hotel is built into the top of a mountain and is home to six hot spring bath environments. We stepped onto the platform to the women's entrance to the "Pacific View Grotto". Immediately we were in a wooden floored changing room with lockers and baskets for clothes. My eyes darted around, not wishing to land on any moving or stationary object for more than a millisecond. I kept asking Mayumi what to do next and then finally after one last deep sour gulp, I let my yukata fall and stuffed it into the locker, holding my towel in front of me as the others were.
We then headed out to the onsen proper. It naturally smelled of sulphur and was not brightly lit by any means, but had a rather nice cave-like ambience. On many sides there were faucets and showers. This was our first stop, to wash and rinse our bodies thoroughly before getting into the hot spring itself. There were containers of shampoo, conditioner and body soap supplied by the hotel and after pulling the little plastic stool over to my post, I sat down and began to wash. I kept a sly eye out for what the others were doing since I had no idea how many times to do what. Again, furtive glances were all I could muster as I didn't want to appear to be rude and staring. I saw bodies of all ages, shapes and sizes. No one's behavior appeared untoward even upon seeing a foreigner (I was the only obvious one at the time) in their midst.
After a thorough rinse I stepped into one of the many pools in the grotto, leaving my towel behind in a plastic bowl on the side. I didn't experience the water as unbearably hot. It was a shallow pool though and I didn't feel comfortable sitting on the steps or on the bottom of it, so I just crouched down and duck walked from one end to the other. A couple of my roommates joined me in this one, but others went elsewhere and I was encouraged to try more than one pool. The temperatures were basically the same, it was the views from the stations that were different.
After about 30 minutes in that particular part of the grotto, we went to another part, washed and rinsed again, ran into some other co-workers, and eased ourselves into a pool that looked out over the Pacific. It was night and the moon had already set, so just the barest phosphorescent gleam crested the waves breaking on the shore. I told everyone to wave at the sailors and fishermen in the boats whose sentinel lights shone like stars in the inky darkness.
"Cheki!", I said loudly to the three women who had assumed a Buddhist monk's pose under three dripping waterfalls. Underneath their hands clasped in prayer, their wet white towels clung to their bodies, from just above their breasts to their upper thighs, their heads bowed as their shoulders were massaged by the pulsating streams of water. Upon hearing my reference to a kind of instant camera they laughed and then moved aside to let others in. It would have made a great picture!
We washed and rinsed off and got back into our cotton bathrobes and left the Pacific Grotto. Just as I was thinking to myself that it wasn't so bad, my roommies declared that they wanted to go to another onsen, and then another and another and yet another until we had visited all six onsens. I looked at them from under an internally arched eyebrow, wondering what the attraction was, and then found out that with each onsen stamp you acquired, you were eligible for a prize at the reception desk. I tried to figure out that reasoning. You didn't have to pay to get into the onsens, why give a prize for more visits? Anyway, I went along and ran into more co-workers who were very pleased to see me participating in this very important part of their culture and by the end of the night, I was very, very, very, clean.
The next morning I got up early and went by myself (the roommies had been out late and I didn't want to disturb them) to the Pacific Grotto. I wanted to catch the view in the daytime and was treated to a pastel pink, blue and orange colored sky that curved over a frothy cornflower blue sea.
There was a "viking" (buffet) for breakfast and then we left the hotel for the next event on our journey . . . a boat ride down Doro-kyo.
To be continued . . .