In the interest of full disclosure, I cannot attest to the sequential accuracy of what I’ll term Hakone incidents two and three. I’m reasonably certain we spent two nights at the onsen ryokan and that incident two happened on the first night. However, the possibility that incident three happened first is possible. In truth, I’d be reluctant to attest to the detailed accuracy of any 40 year old memories but I’m making a sincere effort. With that preamble done, I’ll begin.
Hakone incident two – Hot springs and sushi but no swapping
In addition to its proximity to Mount Fuji, the town of Hakone features an abundance of natural hot springs. These are fed by the volcanic mountain from which the town draws its name. Although its last major magmatic eruption happened 2,900 or 3,000 years ago the mountain is thermally active. (Its most recent phreatic [mainly steam venting] eruption occurred in 2015 though it was close to microscopic by volcanic standards releasing an estimated ash ejection of only 102 cubic meters. By contrast, as I write this the September 2021 eruption of Cumbre Vieja on La Palma in the Canary Islands, has ejected more than 8,000,000 cubic meters of debris.) This activity however, means that Hakone has an astonishing 17 natural onsen.
The two main ways to enjoy these hot springs are at public communal bathhouses such as at Tenzan Onsen
(From Pinterest)
or at a ryokan where you can find both private and communal baths. Some of the baths allow swimsuits and others do not but all are gender separate. The baths at the inn where P and I stayed was communal and entirely within the hotel.
Dinner that night was far from our favorite of the trip consisting, as I recall, of small whole fish, miso soup of an intensity of flavor to which our palates never became accustomed (and which we came to call ‘gross soup’), and other fare that we struggled to consume. Another sad recollection is that we ate very little of it while doing our best to discreetly dispose of it using napkins and other facilities and methods that demanded even greater discretion without drawing attention from staff and anyone else.
Still mildly hungry, we donned our yukatas and made our way to the baths. I shared my soak with one other chap and between the 10-20 words of English he knew and the similar number of Japanese words and phrases I knew, our efforts to communicate certainly had elements of both comedy and comity. More of both would follow.
After soaking for twenty minutes or half an hour we exited together to find that the inn had supplied towels about the same size as a face cloth. He held up the towel and remarked, “Only good for chin-chin” a term that’s slang for penis (or possibly small penis). Given the events that followed, I’m reasonably certain he was being self-deprecating. We slipped into our yukatas and met our travel partners who were exiting the female bath and returned to our respective rooms.
A short time later, the phone rang in our room and a male voice announced a room number that wasn’t ours. I indicated as much, suggested he try again, bade him sayonara and hung up the phone which rang again almost immediately. The same voice said, “No. You come to room 242” (or whatever the room number was). P and I decided to take the chance and went to the suggested room where we our bath partners awaited.
I think we must have spent more than an hour eating tempura and sushi, downing copious amounts of sake and trying our best to have a coherent conversation. As the feast drew to a close, I had the clear impression that the chap wanted to switch partners and have P spend the rest of the night with him while his companion went back with me to my room. I don’t recall precisely how we worked our way out of that and declined but we did.
Hakone incident three – Aussies to the rescue
The next morning hoping we could avoid any awkward guest encounters P and I cautiously departed the inn for our anticipated day on Lake Ashi. The plan was to buy a ticket for one of the famous pirate ships
(Free image from Pixabay)
that traverse the lake. Little did I know that we needed to have made these bookings in advance. We were returning somewhat dejectedly from the dock when an Australian voice rang out in greeting.
In the previous post, I wrote about the day trip P and I took to Nikko. One of the details of the day I omitted was that on more than one occasion we encountered a group of Australians who were outgoing in an almost stereotypically Australian way. We almost certainly had lunch or a shared a beer with a few of them but I don’t recall which.
What I do recall is that we met the same group at Lake Ashi in Hakone. They recognized us and we went over to them and started chatting. In the course of our conversation we explained our situation and they, in great generosity of spirit, invited us on their chartered boat trip. Their guide, noting we weren’t paying and they had, said that if even a single person objected, we couldn’t share the excursion. Needless to say, no one did and, though the weather was gray and we never got our view of Mt. Fuji, we had a splendid day.
Only four or five days had passed since our arrival in Japan and as I look back through what feels like the wrong end of a telescope I’m surprised to recall what an adventure it quickly became.
I’ll break here and return with one more post about a few more memorable moments from this trip before I take a look at some of the notable events of the 1964, 1998, and 2020/21 Olympic Games and before I get into the supplemental information about Japan.