Dearest Rachel –
This morning started off early, as they all do – although perhaps a little extra so today, thanks to yesterday’s nap, which at least had the virtue of allowing me to put together the details of Wednesday’s events. It took me the better part of two hours to get all that written up; I will never understand how some people can turn out thousands of words and multiple articles in a given day. In any event, by the time I was done, Daniel was awake, and we hung around our room for an hour as we waited for the day to begin for everyone else (particularly those running the coffee shop in the lobby, where they were serving breakfast).
Time zones aside, I think I’m starting to get used to life here. It’s a pity that, by the time I’m fully acclimated to it all, it’s going to be time for us to go home. Although, to be fair, it’s not as if we’re ever going to have the full ‘living autonomously on our own in Japan’ experience; after all, our breakfast is provided for by the hotel, and the rest of the time, we’re eating at various restaurants. It’s not as if we’re having to shop and prepare stuff for ourselves – and that’s not even considering the fact that we really can’t go all that far on our own without transport…
We’ve got two stops on our itinerary for today; and, considering that we’re being conveyed there by bus, it’s not as if we can walk home if we get tired or bored. This may prove important in the near future.
At least the first stop is fairly interesting, and undoubtedly unique; we’re visiting a park where the Japanese macaques have made themselves at home, complete with hot springs that are reserved for them alone (although the part apparently has a ryokan where folks can bathe outdoors and occasionally have themselves an inadvertent encounter with the monkeys, who come and go as they please). This is a species of macaque that can only be found in Japan, so this is probably the one chance we’re likely to get to encounter them.
However, to get there requires a two kilometer hike up the mountain; which wouldn’t be such a terrible thing if it weren’t for the fact that the entire path is wet and muddy. I’m rather regretting wearing a virtually brand new pair of gym shoes, but at least being black (as opposed to white like my last few pairs), they don’t show the dirt as much. On the other hand, the black color doesn’t spare my jeans from getting spattered on the hem as we walk, each step drawing a slight bit of mud into the air to land on them. I’m going to have to wash them both off once we get back to the hotel. While Daniel goes on ahead of me, to the point that I lose track of him until we finally get to the park entrance, by the time I catch up with him, he’s a little distressed about the situation. “I sure hope this is going to be worth it,” he murmurs.
I want to say that he did find it ‘worth it’; he claims that it was, but I don’t always know whether he’s agreeing to be agreeable, or if he really enjoyed it despite slogging through the mud. Granted, he’s never been a particularly good liar (which we’ve always been pleased and proud of, as you’ll recall), so maybe he really was okay with it. In either case, it’s a true ‘one-opportunity-one-meeting’ occasion, so even if it was too unpleasant to really appreciate, at least we can say we’ve been here.
Then again… maybe the fact that I’m going on about it to this extent suggests that it was me that didn’t like it most of all.
Since we have to tread so carefully on the path, I make a point to head back down a little bit before Miho has everybody else rounded up to head back to the bus. Somehow, we wind up walking alongside Jack on the way down. As we make our way down the path, I ask him about his YouTube work, since we really haven’t taken a lot of time to talk to him (or anyone else in the group) on any in-depth basis. We go on about his favorites (which admittedly, he has difficulty putting his finger on, but finally settles on his series regarding the French Revolution and Robespierre in particular), the surprises (evidently, Oliver Cromwell wasn’t as big a deal as a man compared to the men who effectively put him in his position), and his upcoming plans (for what it’s worth, here’s a hint: if he does something about Edward VIII and mentions his little brother having to change his name to George, I’ll consider myself as having contributed to the project, if only a minuscule part of it).
The advantage of walking with him, in particular, is that it means that even if you wind up being the last ones to the bus, no one is going to complain about that fact. He’s the host of this trip, after all; there’ll be no fun until he shows up. At the same time, I’m perplexed by our position; we’d left the park near the front of the pack, and I hadn’t recalled being passed by so many people as all that. How in the heck did we wind up at the tail end of the parade?
We don’t have long to ponder that line of questioning, however, as we need to make our way to the onsen resort for a shower and a soak. However, once we get there, it happens that the onsen area itself is closed, presumably for cleaning; they’ll be open at some point between two and three. We follow along with a group of ours to a local restaurant serving curry and various other comfort foods – despite the fact that Daniel, in particular, claims not to be all that hungry yet. Which turns out to be a good thing, as the place doesn’t have a table big enough to accommodate more than six people, so we head out and make our way back to the onsen.
This is where my comment about being idle and bored suddenly comes into play. To be sure, we’ve no compelling reason to want to be back at the hotel (if nothing else, we’ve spent enough time there that I’ve been starting to worry that we’ve been confining ourselves there a bit), but we wind up sitting in the onsen’s empty restaurant for a good hour all by ourselves, and nearly another hour thereafter once the others join us. At least we manage to connect to the internet to keep ourselves occupied – and Daniel actually nods off, like a cat in a sunny window.
Once everybody returns, it turns out that there’s but a literal handful of us willing to go into the onsen area proper, disrobe, and take advantage of the opportunity to wash up and soak ourselves. To be sure, we’re not as keen as all that to do so among a group of semi-strangers, but this is the whole point of being here, so we head down the two floors via elevator to the baths, along with but three other guys.
Ironically, we actually have the most trouble with getting our shoes off and placed in the little shelf between the two baths, as the attendant keeps telling us “No, no, no!” when we first set them in place. Unfortunately, she is the first person we’ve encountered in any detail that has no English to speak of whatsoever, and as a result, we never do figure out what she’s objecting to. On the other hand, Daniel and I are the last to get our shoes off and get in, so maybe whatever she was objecting to had been resolved by that point.
For what it’s worth, it turned out to not nearly be such as big a deal to get undressed in front of the others who had decided to participate in this experience. Once we’re in the bath itself – especially outside, in the cold outdoor air, the hot water coming up to our neck makes it feel like we’re wearing clothes from there on down. I can’t explain how that works, but it did, somehow.
We stayed in there and chatted on various topics – although once things veered political, Daniel retreated to the indoor baths to keep his peace – but after some twenty or thirty minutes, we’d had enough. Indeed, once I stood up, I wasn’t affected so much by the brisk outdoor air – in fact, it was actually pretty refreshing after all that time – but that I was fairly dizzy at first from sitting in the hot water for so long. I think that’s actually a common occurrence, but it didn’t mean that it wasn’t disconcerting to experience in that brief moment.
As we drove away, making our way to the highway leading back to the prefectural capital, I felt a sort of regret for not having brought you along with, but seeing as this place, like the one at Yamashiro, is completely man-made, scattering you there – even only a little bit – would have been pointless. I would just be cluttering the place up with that sprinkling of ash, and they would be cleaned out as soon as they were discovered. To be honest, I haven’t found any place where it would be worthwhile to set a few grains of you here in Nagano (and I know Daniel actually seems to disapprove of my practice of scattering you far and wide like this), but it seems a shame to not do so. Then again, maybe it’s enough that I’ve brought you with; in any event, I’ll have to content myself with that thought.
Once back at the hotel, there’s some talk about gathering in the lobby in an hour for dinner – completely optional – but Daniel wants to check out a nearby ‘depaato’ (department store). I use the Japanese term because it isn’t like the ones that used to anchor the great American shopping malls as we remember them (both the stores and the malls); they’re more like malls in and of themselves, and they have a lot going on in them (unlike most present-day American malls). Besides, we figure, we should be able to find something to eat while we’re out.
However, while there’s a certain familiarity to these places – everybody needs to buy necessities, no matter where you’re from, and the format is both like we know from home, and how we recall from past experiences – when you can’t read labels, you don’t know what you’re getting. Even these few blocks away from the station and hotel, we’re at a loss as to what’s being offered.
Things are no better in the streets; everything is color, light and sound, but without a translation, we don’t know what we’re looking for. To be fair, part of that is that we don’t know what we want; some of our number were raving about a yakiniku place they’d been to on our first night in Nagano, and while I could go for some meat, I didn’t feel like troubling with cooking it myself. Eventually, after snaking our way through several alleys, we came across a place offering miso ramen and stone-ground, locally sourced flour noodles – what, as it so happened, we’d been recommended to check out by our CoPilot app. After a few difficulties with the ordering machine (while they had a kiosk to place our order on, only the main menu had an English option; the sides offered with the bowl of ramen had no translation, and we were obliged to pass those up), we were shown to a couple of seats (and it was just as well we’d taken our time, as the tiny place was packed; our hesitancy allowed a few patrons to finish their meal and clear out, making room for us to sit down and get as comfortable as we could).
So, yeah… once again, we didn’t connect with the others, but we were good to go on our own (at least, eventually). I think we should be ready to handle ourselves in the days to come. That being said, we’d still appreciate it if you were to keep an eye on us, and wish us luck. We’re still going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 