Entries this day: Onsen

Onsen

10:26am JST Wednesday 3 March 2004

My first onsen today. Indoor co-ed place, with all the amenities. Lockers open by putting my clock shaped wristband in front of the locker. I can buy food with the wristband, too.

5:34pm JST Wednesday 3 March 2004

Wow. Fun fun fun. It reminded me of a futuristic utopia, with couples walking around in loose cotton coat-shirts, enjoying the spotless baths of all variety of temperatures and styles.

The dead sea bath was one of my favorites, though any of this brine water touching the eyes was something of a party stopper. Floating on my back allowed the water to, let's say, disinfect nicks under my chin from shaving. Eeee. In this pool 裕子 and I played float around with eyes closed and after a few minutes try to point to my camera (a convenient arbitrary point). We found large discrepencies between our optical and our inner ear's belief about where things are. (*)

(*) "optical" means pertaining to light, and in this case, our eyes using light to gather information about our surroundings. What means pertaining to balance, our inner ears feeling changes in orientation and momentum to gather information about our surroundings?

Anyway, the "Cairo" sauna was Super hot and humid, almost chokingly so. I didn't seem able to relax in there enough to actually sleep. I had to breathe slowly or my lungs would choke and my heart would speed up in that room. Wow.

We enjoyed sleeping on the large warmed marble pedestal. This room was all white marble, with a meter tall white marble pedestal in the middle, about as big as a king size bed. This room reminded me of ancient Rome, not that I consciously remember being there. This was one of my favorite places, but I forgot to get a picture of it though.

Though the weather was literally freezing today when we arrived, and stayed pretty cold all day, the water in the outer pools was well hot enough to make staying in them very long an overheating experience. There were some girls shooting water canons (more like pistols, but the pistols were mounted on the wall of the pool, unlike plastic toys) at a target that would turn on a hot fountain thing in the middle of the pool, and I found myself wondering if I wanted to know them more. Like, how old are they? I think they were just flip-flat too young for me to even bother saying HI, much less considering hanging out with them. But at the same time I was like who are they? What are they like? Do they speak English? This last question made my brain go "aru?" because my mind apparently thinks that these previous questions can be answered only if they speak English.

I didn't talk to them.

We saw some other outdoor pools, one of which was called "coffee." I was like, "is it coffee coffee?" It was. I got in it just for the picture, but dude, I assure you it was disgusting. Like a sick watered down coffee flavor, a flavor which I hate anyway, but somehow watering it down made it even worse; I guess the smell was made worse by weakening it. Bluh.

裕子 is tired (me too); we're going to rock out of here and maybe I'll write more. In short, this day was money.