Hakone...ne!

This weekend, 24 other TUJ students and I traveled to Hakone, the hot springs (hereafter called “onsen”) capital of Japan. It was my first real trip out of Tokyo (Yokohama technically was out of Tokyo, but was a city nonetheless) and allowed me really to experience the unique parts of Japan’s culture. The trip was packed full of fun stuff, so my descriptions here won’t do it complete justice, but I’ll try to be as concise and detailed as possible.

We left early (8:15AM) yesterday morning and took a chartered bus down to Hakone, which was only about an hour and a half away. What was good was that many of the people on the trip were from the other two housing facilities, so it was a lot of either new faces or faces that I had seen but not really gotten to know too well. After the bus ride, much of which was slept through by yours truly, we arrived in Hakone and headed off to a soba place for lunch. Before lunch, we were waiting in a little shrine nearby and this cute old Japanese woman was explaining the history of the temple, except all in Japanese. When I mentioned that I could understand some Japanese, she mainly talked to me and I was expected to translate. The problem was I got about 50% of what she actually said, so my translation was probably not too accurate, but hey, no one will ever know.

Following lunch, we went to the Hakone Open Air Museum, a collection of hundreds of sculptures and interactive art, all arranged on this huge piece of property overlooking the valley. Quite dramatic, it was. The sculptures were incredibly cool and a lot of them allowed you to climb over, in, through, or down them. For example, there was this egg shaped one that had a bouncy “yolk” in the middle that we jumped on for a while. There were underground tunnels and stone mazes and huge climbing nets and stuff like that. It was essentially an artistic amusement park. I had really never seen anything like it before.

After the museum we headed back to our hotel in the main town. The hotel was incredibly nice and had both western and Japanese-style rooms. Our room (three other guys and I) was Japanese-style. The main room was covered in tatami mats and had a large table in the middle. We slept on futon beds that were magically taken out of the closet and prepared for us after we returned for dinner. What service! I had never stayed in, let alone SEEN, a Japanese-style room before, so it was quite a unique experience. It was pretty comfortable, I must say!

So after dinner, which consisted of a HUGE meal of shabu-shabu (basically you cook your own meat in a hot pot with veggies, etc.), tempura, rice, dessert, etc. followed by karaoke (I did a duet of “Barbie Girl” with a friend – perhaps she’ll put it up on YouTube), we went into the onsen. For those of you not familiar with the Japanese onsen, you have to be completely naked when you get in. And it’s not like you have your clothes close by; you need to leave them in a cubby in a completely different room and only have a tiny tiny little towel to cover you. As expected, many people were a bit nervous (myself included) with the whole situation, but we knew that’s what we came here to do. So we went down, rinsed off (required before you get in), stripped down, and hoped for the best. The funny thing was, once we got in, all the nervous disappeared and was replaced by one of the most relaxing, fulfilling experiences of my life. An onsen is NOT like a Jacuzzi. First, it is about 25 degrees warmer and comes from natural underground springs. Next, there are a bunch of minerals and vitamins that naturally occur in the water, which give it a milky gray color. Finally, you really can’t stay in for more than 10 minutes. A few people tried to and quickly got out because they started to feel dizzy. Let me just say, faithful readers, that all of you MUST experience onsen before you die. I can’t describe how wonderful it feels not only when you are in the water, but after you come out, dry off, and relax. I felt like I could have laid down in the hallway outside the onsen and just fallen asleep. Quite a great experience!

So after the onsen, all of us gathered in a friend’s hotel room, drank some plum sake and wine, and just hung out. It was really great to bond with the people there and meet/make new friends. That was definitely one of the trip’s highlights.

We woke up this morning bright and early, went into the onsen one last time, and then went off to nearby Odawara Castle. By far the highlight of the castle was that they rented out full samurai armor and swords for 200 Yen to tourists. Of course, we indulged and got some great pictures out of it. Next, we went to my favorite part of the trip, Daiyuzen, an enormous forested area full of temples and shrines. This is just one of those things that words won’t do justice (check out my pictures on Facebook to get a better idea). The best part was that the main temple was perched wayyyy on top of a staircase of over 200 stairs. It was quite the workout. We got to the top and were encouraging all of the Japanese tourists that were climbing the stairs, screaming stuff like “Ganbare!!” (try hard!) and “Ike!!” (go!). It was funny.

It doesn’t seem like a lot, but they certainly packed a whole bunch of stuff into the trip and it was great to experience many different aspects of Japanese culture, in addition to meeting a bunch more great people. Again, I definitely could not pack all of the details into one journal entry, so if you are interested in more of what happened, shoot me an e-mail and be sure to check out my pictures!

Jaa mata ne!