Day 8 - Asama Onsen

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(Blogged on 28th December but posted under December 19)

Today we decided to head to Asama Onsen. There are two famous onsens near Matsumoto, and we chose to go to Asama which apparently has more history to the town and feels more like a neighbourhood onsen as compared to the other which has more beautiful views. (I think with all the fantastic scenery we have witnessed so far, we were starting to get a little overwhelmed.)

For the clueless, Onsens are natural hot spring baths. Either a small poolhouse is erected directly over the source or the hot spring is piped from the source to the poolhouse. It is divided into males and females, and you go in buck naked. And no, you can't just jump straight into the hot spring (you will probably scald yourself badly and give your system a shock, plus you will probably horrify all the Japanese old men and women especially) and stay in the water to hide your naked self. Instead you have to sit by the poolside and clean yourself (in other words - bathe) with a towel till you are spotless before you can go into the onsen. You can probably tell by now that i am not a big fan of onsens. In fact i did not even try it. But my friend loves it, so we made our way to Asama.

Whilst she was in the Onsen, i roamed the Asama neighbourhood before i settled into a small cafe to work on my netbook. Since this was a small neighbourhood, English was almost non-existent. All the menus were in Japanese, there were not even photos to help me out. The cafe i was in was also clearly a local hangout. There were three other customers, all seated at the front counter, conversing cheerfully with the cafe owner. When i entered, they gave me a cursory look and spoke to me in Japanese. I opened my mouth and English came out, and they realized i was not Japanese. I don't look Japanese, so i am not sure why a lot of Japanese think i am Japanese. I don't even dress Japanese! I wear a hoodie and jeans all the time. Anyhow, as always we managed to find a way to get around the language barrier 0 through gesturing and really bad Japanese on my part. I got what i wanted - coffee and a Japanese bun. There was a variety of buns available, and i did not understand what kind of fillings there were. One of the customers attempted to draw it out. It was a weird-arsed drawing. It looked like an egg on a stalk but i politely asked him if he drew a flower. The others laughed. It was only as i discussed with my friend later on that it dawned on me that he was probably drawing a brinjal (egg plant).

When we got back to Matsumoto, we roamed the little neighbourhood again but i was getting bored and also it was too late to visit some of the other museums like the Timepiece museum. In the end P went shopping and i just paid 500yen to watch several terrible C-rated Japanese movies in the hotel room. Oh and i did my laundry too. And this is what really annoyed me - since the washing machines were all located at the lobby, i had to shuffle down in my pajamas with my load of dirty clothes. And because i had to wash my pjs, i had to don on the damn pjs the hotel provided. So i shuffled casually down in thongs and pjs, and i noticed all the Japanese men looking stunned. I did not know why since wearing slippers and pjs were very common in Western societies and i probably took it for granted i supposed. Anyhow, i cursed when two Japanese men entered the elevator with me, and i hurriedly spoke so they knew i was not Japanese. They relaxed visibly. Wth? Later P told me that apparently it was not the Japanese custom to wear pjs around i suppose. Ha. But you know, this would not have happened if the hotel did not place their damn machines at the lobby!

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