Month 1 part 1

Never take a selfie with me, this will be the result!

So it wasn't very long ago that I looked at the calendar and realized I've been here over a month, so to celebrate I'm going to give a quick rundown on some of the things I've done. While more in depth posts on these activities will follow, I am not sure when... I'm drowning in homework.

Odaiba Oedo-Onsen-Monogatari

This is a place that I've wanted to visit for around 3 years now, and I finally managed to find some people who would go with me! Emi is half Thai and half Japanese, though she's lived in Thailand for the past 6 years or so. She is in the same program as me so we spend A LOT of time together. Mayuko is my senpai and graciously offered to come with us, even though she doesn't think her English is very good and my Japanese is terrible. 

So the place is billed as an 'onsen theme park', they have designed the interior after an old red light street in Edo that is constantly having a festival. One of the first things that you do is pick out a rental yukata and obi, this is what you will wear the entire time. There are 6 choices for each gender and 2 for children, these seem to change every so often. 

I decided to mimic Pippy Long Stocking

After you and your companions get changed you enter into the main area. IT IS AWESOME!!! You have the choice to go outside and walk in the foot bath/river thingy, you can grab some food at one of the many different dining options, lie in rock salt, have the dead skin nibbled off your feet by tiny little fish, get a massage, play some games or finally... relax in the onsen.

We started with the foot river, it was entertaining because Emi and Mayuko found all the different types of rocks painful. How it works is each 3/4 of a meter there is a new type of rock that you have to walk on followed by a tiny area where it is smooth. Its apparently good for your feet, and some areas did feel very good, but there were certain areas that only someone who cannot feel pain in their feet would walk on.

After we walked around and had a small snack before entering the onsen, Emi thought we would have bathing suits or something. For all the people who don't know what an onsen is let me give you a quick explanation. An onsen is a large communal bath or series of baths where the water is provided from deep underground, Japan is famous for these and different types of water are said to have different properties like healing for example. To be clear an onsen and a sento are different. To start you have to get NAKED, this is what freaks most foreigners out... ah the stories I have. Next you have to shower and make sure you are thoroughly clean, this is how the bath water stays clean. Taking a bath in Japan is very different to how we take one back home in Canada, I'll do a post about this at a later date.

After you are squeaky clean it is time to enter one of the baths, there were 8 different ones I believe. Each one is a different temperature and has different features, one you lay down in and had jets massage you, another is a rather small barrel that you or a friend can share (we fit 3 in, the water overflowed everywhere). They also have saunas and one pool of freezing cold water. You can never lose a foreigner in an onsen, we are the ones who look like boiled lobsters and can only stay in one bath for 5-10 minutes. After spending around 2 hours going between baths we decided we would check out some other stuff.

We bought different foods and shared them followed by more wandering around, this was also when I played 2 games. The first was a shurikan throwing game, Emi and many other people tried it before me. I failed miserably but was marginally better than the people we had seen try it. Next I played the underwear game... it's not as weird as it sounds! When we visited there was a Gintama! theme, I'm not exactly sure how this game fit other than it featured one of the characters and the prizes were themed. Within 30 seconds you had to pull out as many pairs of underwear as you could, but one at a time and with only one hand. You got points for how many of them had a stain... Okay so maybe it was as weird as it sounded.

After spending 9-10 hours lounging around we called it a day and headed home. If you ever come to Japan I suggest going to this place since it's very foreigner friendly and a cool experience.

Your pampered blogger