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Week 104
The trees close around us, hugging the sides of the road. The car jolts into a rut dug by water, hops back up onto the trail.
I say, “I can’t believe I took Penelope through this.”
Tony says, “You took Penelope through this?”
I say, “Yeah, in winter.”
A laugh. “How?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I can’t believe I took Penelope through this.”
The rain hangs in the air. It might not even be raining anymore, but the wipers are going, and moisture hits the windows.The air has the quality of rain, heavy with wetness and heat. The woods around us are topographically schizoid, rising and falling in sharp angles. The road lurches the way that only roads laid before the age of cars can. It looks like an attempt at pavement was made many years ago, but in the intervening time traffic and nature have wrecked the concrete into plates of rock and rubble.
We arrive at the onsen. It consists of a family of small wooden buildings huddled on a little level ground. All around are tall bushes and reeds. The platonic form of a brook babbles by on the left. The ground rises steeply behind the onsen, up into the clouds somewhere in a wall of green.
The buildings all look tremendously old, the sort of clumsy rigidity of old men. The roofing is thatched and the walls are all wood worn down by the weather, dark, wrinkled, the edges worn off. A man in a yukata slides a window open and leans out. Our footsteps crunch on the round, wet gravel. We exchange a shiny gold 500 yen coin for the right to enter the onsen. A lady in a dark blue apron hands us a map with English words on it, all drawn by hand, and smiles.
We move to a low building off to the right. There are a couple of doors, above which are signs painted in Japanese characters indicating men’s and women’s sides and the names of the baths. We enter our respective sides.
The changing rooms are cramped and make you feel awkward in your body, all elbows, when you undress. The floor is wooden and soggy, the air tangy with the smell of sulfur. The two baths sit separately off the main changing room, behind sliding wooden doors with glass windows. They rattle in their casings as you slide them. The sound is deeply satisfying.
In the Shiro-yu bath, water runs through a gutter on the wall and drains out into the bath, which is big enough for maybe four people who are comfortable with each other. The gutter, the bath, the floor, are all crusted with a hard, smooth mineral deposit from the water. There’s a place where the water drips out of the gutter, at a joint; the floor below it is raised in a small yellowish stalagmite. The water is lukewarm and milky. You can’t see more than an inch or two into it. It smells deeply of sulfur, which here is a healthy, relaxing smell -- not the smell of rotten eggs or the sour taste of someone else’s flatulence, but one of minerals and nature and warmth.
No one speaks much. A couple of syllables are exchanged in reverence. This onsen has been open since the 1600s. I have no idea how old the buildings are. Everything I’ve seen could have been built in the 1800s, for the technological simplicity of it. The glass in the windows is mottled, warped. The wood is worn way down on the boards leading back outside, to the outside bath. I catch a glimpse of a security camera, hidden inside a wooden box. It’s aimed at the door to the women’s changing room.
The outdoor bath, too, is milky white. It’s alongside a public pathway, separated from the rest of the onsen -- e.g. the rooms for staying overnight -- by a row of tall reeds. It’s a mixed-gender bath, but the only people in it are old men. Most of them sit motionless with closed eyes, statuelike. There’s a suzumebachi, or giant hornet, buzzing around people’s heads. Tony and I scoot to the part of the bath furthest from the hornet. It lands on one old guy’s head. I squirm in place. The man swats it away. It lands again, he swats again. An old, tremendously wrinkled guy, probably not more than four feet tall, produces a fly swatter from nowhere and kills the hornet when it lands on the rim of the bath. Doesn’t he know that killing them releases the pheromone that attracts more? He flicks it into the bushes. Another hornet appears, skims the water. I stand up and head inside.
The Naka-no-yu bath is darker, an opalescent gray. It’s also significantly hotter than the others. I sit on the edge of the bath with my legs in the water. When I take my legs out, they’re bright pink from about mid-thigh down. I decide to sit down and count ten slow breaths. It’s brutally warm in the same way that a massage is brutally painful. I feel brutalized, but somehow better for it. My runny nose is clear for the first time in days. My skin feels soft, new. It’s hard to breathe but my body isn’t reacting the way that it normally does when it’s hard to breathe. I feel like I’m getting enough oxygen. I reach ten, don’t want to get out, decide to count another ten.
When I get out I’m sweating profusely. I towel myself off but sweat springs back up on my arms, chest, back. I pull my t-shirt on anyway, my sweat bleeding dark islands across my stomach. The sweat from my forehead is dripping into my eyes while I dress. I wrap my towel around my forehead and head out into the cool, rainy afternoon. The sulfur in the air is almost sweet to me, by now.
Previous
Climbing Tomuraushi with Tony over two days and running out of water on what was maybe the best walk I've ever done.
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2014
July 2014
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Week 101
24Climbing Tomuraushi with Tony over two days and running out of water on what was maybe the best walk I've ever done.
2013
December 2013
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Week 66
20My first real trip out to Shiretoko, touring of the Five Lakes district in the late fall.
November 2013
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Week 65
20Climbing Yotei for the first time, alone in the early winter, and being absolutely floored by the beauty.
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Week 64
6Twenty-fourth tour round the sun and I'm still enamoured of the autumn.
October 2013
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Week 62
30Climbing Kogane-yama out west with Jordan, padding out the post with a bunch of rubbish about steep dropoffs
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Week 61
7Running 10 kilometres in Okoppe.
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Week 60
7Random stuff I overheard on The Bus in Honolulu.
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Week 59
7Driving over Ukishima-toge on the way back from Asahikawa to Takinoue
September 2013
August 2013
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Week 55
26Camping down south, at one of the welcome parties I think, coinciding with the Jigoku-matsuri in Noboribetsu.
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Week 54
19Driving home from Tony's house in the rain.
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Week 53
15Driving down south, visiting the Jozankei sex museum, sleeping in the Matsumae Michi-no-Eki parking lot
July 2013
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Week 50
29Climbing Tokachi-dake with Emma and Oliver.
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Week 49
16Climbing Teshio-dake with Tony and Oliver, visiting an abandoned school on the outskirts of Monbetsu.
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Week 48
9Driving north from Asahikawa with the windows down.
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Week 47
1A brief interlude at the top of the Nissho Pass, driving with Tony down to some event in the southwest.
June 2013
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Week 45
20Returning to Shari after the abortive attempt the previous fall, a trio of Kiwis and I summit in glory.
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Week 43
3The first day of summer, coming surprisingly late to northeastern Hokkaido.
May 2013
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Week 40
13Oliver let me tag along on an excursion to see what was left of the rail line that used to run through Yubetsu.
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Week 39
4I drove Penelope the AZ-Wagon around the whole perimeter of Hokkaido to see what else was out there.
April 2013
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Week 36
17Tooling around Maruseppu in Penelope the AZ-Wagon.
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Week 35
11Much ado about melting snow; the gang comes across a pair of abandoned cars.
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Week 34
2The first days of spring are coming to Hokkaido.
March 2013
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Week 31
12Coming back from Pippu, I am struck by the first blue sky I've seen in what feels like months.
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Week 30
8A blizzard strikes Yubetsu.
February 2013
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Week 29
26Skiing at Kurodake and my first visit to the Sounkyo Ice Festival.
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Week 28
18A trip on the icebreaking ship Aurora to see the sea ice on the Sea of Okhotsk.
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Week 27
13Back to Yamabiko-no-taki in wintertime to see the frozen waterfall.
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Week 26
5In Iwamizawa, I experience my first (and thus far only) earthquake, and we drive home through thick snow.
January 2013
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Week 25
28A bit about Hokkaido in the dark on a quiet evening.
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Week 24
22Going out skiing at Piyashiri, trying to leave anxiety behind me.
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Week 23
16A brief layover in Osaka on the way back from the States leads to some real soul-searching on trains.
2012
December 2012
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Week 19
18Much ado about a bunch of snow. I guess I'm not used to quite this much snow.
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Week 18
13The night of the rented Higashikawa cabin, and the emotional aftermath.
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Week 17
3The days are approaching their shortest; winter is well & truly here & boy is it dark.
November 2012
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Week 16
26The winter is starting to settle in. I celebrate American Thanksgiving with friends in Monbetsu.
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Week 15
19In which the author rambles a little bit.
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Week 14
12A belated Halloween party, home from which we took the low roads over the mountain passes.
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Week 13
5More urbex at the Kampo-no-yado Sounkyo, a semi-destroyed hotel by the side of the road just outside of Kamikawa.
October 2012
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Week 12
29Konomai, the first time I explored some abandoned infrastructure that marks so much of the face of Hokkaido.
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Week 11
23The first abortive trip up Shari-dake, accompanied by a quartet of Kiwis, ending in a mad rush down the mountainside after hours of beating through the wilderness.
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Week 10
15Yamabiko-no-taki, my first encounter with a higuma, a drive on a forest road, and karaoke with the Monbetsu folks.
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Week 9
10A trip to Nitori, a night in Asahikawa, and a trip to Tenninkyo
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Week 8
1Hauling Renyu on a mikoshi through Kamiyubetsu.
September 2012
August 2012
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Week 3
29Arriving in Japan, Tokyo Orientation, the train up to Yubetsu, and my first days at work.