The train station is a great place to notice the enormous differences between China and Japan. In Japan the station is organized in a logical and efficient manner. If you still manage to get confused, there are conveniently located informational booths, each stocked with a fluent English speaker. There are multilingual maps and multilingual train schedules. The passengers wait calmly in lines and file into the train one by one. The car is tidy, and instead of throwing their trash on the ground people will actually walk all the way to the trash can to throw it away. When the train leaves the station, there are four, equally spaced, well dressed employees standing on the platform, smiling an waving goodbye. When the conductor leaves your car, he bows and begs your leave. China is similar in that they also have trains. Everything else is accompanied by thousands of people, screaming, spitting, puking, and chicken feet.
Kinosaki was a small, quiet town with only two main roads. When we got there, there were only a few bathers walking around in their yukatas. Christine chased a few of them down to get a picture. We got into town an hour or two before we could check in, so we strolled around to check out the sights.
Winter is crab season, and the city was obviously proud of their signature ingredient. There were giant crab shaped signs and shops spilling over with live and frozen specimen. Christine liked watching little kids get creeped out by the ones that were still kicking.
We stopped for lunch, and realized that this town didn't cater too much to foreigners. We've gotten used to badly translated menus, or at least a few pictures. Unfortunately, we were able to find neither. Most restaurants had plastic replicas of most of their dishes sitting out front, so we had to bring our waitress outside to point at them. Stephanie and I did all right with our lunches, but Christine ended up with a bowl of raw squid.
After checking in, this lady brought us to our room and poured a cup of tea. She then presented us with our yukatas and gave an moderately comprehensible, Japanese language lesson about how to put them on.
Here, Christine is wearing her "underwear" layer. I am decked out in a 3 layer, "night out on the town" number.
We then hit the streets for our first Onsen experience. I'm not afraid to say I was a little nervous going into it. It wasn't so much the nudity that had me worried. We had been repeatedly notified (through leaflets and guidebooks) that the etiquette in an Onsen was very particular. One must rinse before soaking, and one's towel must not touch the bath, etc. I was worried I might set off an international incident if I just strolled in there with my shower cap and loofa and started scrubbin' my toes. As it turned out, I had little to worry about. The Onsen was a more social place than I had imagined. To be clear, people weren't wandering up to strangers and offering handshakes or anything, but fathers were there with their sons and teenagers were there hanging out together. Only the oldest fogies bothered themselves with the bathing too much, but the pre-soak rinse was mandatory. Also, I had to keep my towel on my head to keep it out of the water.
The ritual of the experience was soothing, as was sitting in hot baths all day. If there was a fantasy land where the hot water never ran out and people could stay in the shower all day, it would probably look a lot like Kinosaki-Onsen. The city had 7 Onsen, but only 6 were open the day we were there. Each one was unique- a couple had small outdoor baths, some had waterfalls, some had steam rooms, they were all tiled and decorated to look fancy. We were able to make it to 3 before we had to get back to our room for dinner. Or as I like to call it: the Best Meal I Have Ever Eaten and Likely Ever Will Eat In My Entire Life.
Three women helped transform our small tea room into a feast fit for a king. If you remember the scene in "Forrest Gump" where Bubba is explaining all of the ways you can eat shrimp, you might be able to imagine what our dinner was like: just replace shrimp with crab. We had boiled crab, baked (on the table) crab, sashimi crab (that's right, raw crab legs. And they were DELICIOUS), a bottomless dish of crab legs to be eaten shabu shabu style (where you boil the crabs in a broth at the table), and a box of crab innards presented as neatly and appetizingly as only a Japanese hotel could manage. We feasted for hours.
Happy Birthday Christine!
After dinner we were able to go to one more Onsen before bed.
While we were gone, our room had been transformed into a bedroom.
In the morning we were served a traditional breakfast. The woman who served us was explaining our meal in Japanese, when she came to a small spinach side. She pointed at it and said "papee."
"Papee," I duitifully responded, trying to commit my new Japanese word to memory.
"Papee," she repeated.
I smiled at her, thinking "yeah, papee, I get it. Spinach."
She made a muscle and pinched it. "Very strong. Papee." I finally understood that she was trying to make a cultural connection.
"Ohhhhhh! Popeye!"
The rest of our meal consisted of a full salted fish, some baked tofu, a soft boiled egg, a salad, some fish cake things, and dried seaweed.
We devoured it all.
The next morning we jumped on another train and went to Osaka where we were staying in "a bad part of town." We felt comfortable when we got there though, since it was still a little cleaner than Shanghai. We were able to meet up with Adam Klimkowski there. He's a friend of both Christine and mine from High Scool (he played lax). He's been living and working in Osaka for two years, and is now fluent in Japanese. He was a great tour guide, and led us directly to all of the best sights and bars in the city. Osaka is known more for its night life that its tourists spots. We walked through "American Town" which was a small area with hip hop and hippie shops. We stopped in a bar there and ate octopus balls.
We had dinner and some beers at a place where you never had to interact with a waiter or waitress. Instead, you punch your order into a touch screen. When service was lagging, we ordered 10 extra plates to get things moving. They also had more western friendly seating. It was set up with the low tables, like most restaurants, but the genius innovation was to hollow out the area underneath so you could let your legs dangle down. Goodbye sore lumbar.
We got up the next morning and had to catch a flight. We made one last stop, since Stephanie had been trying to get to an English language bookstore since we had landed. Christine and I bought like 8000 yen on manga and literature by Japanese authors. After we had spent the last of our yen, we caught our limo for the airport. Here's a shot from the airport "limo" (bus).
Even though I enjoyed Japan's organization, politeness, and cleanliness, I also noticed things that I've come to like about China. Japan's streets seemed desolate in comparison. There was no street food and there were no blankets covered in knock off merchandise. There were no contraptions making their ways down the street while shouldering improbable loads. China's streets are alive.
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