Onsen!

Oooh. Ooooooh. I have fallen in love. And it is a somewhat expensive love, but oh man. Onsen are amazing.

Today was a holiday (Sports Day?) and since we did not have classes, a few friends and I trotted off to Odaiba (a man-made island in Tokyo) to go to a hot spring there. Once I got over the whole "ahh naked around lots of other women! Who keep staring at the gaijin! Awkward!" thing, I quite happily boiled myself like a lobster for several hours.

So the set-up was like this: you change into a yukata, and go wander around inside the onsen's first area - there are souveneir shops, various food stalls, lots of gorgeous decoration. We took a short look around, then went into the actual hot springs. Gone are all the clothes and everything except for a tiny hand towel, which you can dampen with cold water to keep cool or pull your hair out of your face. Or shield a section of your body, which was what we did most of the time as we first minced nervously in. First we cleansed ourselves with warm water, which you have to do before using the springs, and sat in the largest tub of hot water. There's an outside section of hot springs, more resembling a (very hot) river, which we tried next. Then we dipped our toes and towels into the cold pool to cool down. Then the steam showers and sauna. The cold pool again, as the Canadian girl and I had a marked resemblance to cooked lobsters. Next we tried the silt-and-nanobubbles pool, which was milky white and contained lots of minerals. After spending an hour and a half to two hours in these pools, we washed ourselves and shampooed, soaped, etc and went to get changed back into our yukata. We wandered around inside again, and then found another outdoors section.

Oooh. This was fun. More warm little rivers/ponders, with rocks put into the bottom to stimulate pressure points on your feet. Sometimes they were quite painful. Here, we found a place where "Doctor Fish" were used - an extra $15 to have fish nibble the dead skin off your feet. I like fish, thought it was awesome, and dragged one of the other girls in with me. The rest were rather grossed out. SO TICKLISH. Also, the fish attendants were hitting on us SO MUCH. It was hilarious. And first time a Japanese guy has flirted with me this trip. :p It was a lot of fun though and my feet were smoooooth afterwards.

I really needed this. It's been a rough week or two, and this was so relaxing. All girls too, so just a nice girls' night out. :)

Pictures~

Inside the onsen








Outside the onsen




Doctor Fish!