1st-Timer Shinkansen and Onsen!

That’s Bullet Train and Hot Springs to you and me, bub. They’re both very famous here.  But I’ll get to that. We’ve been busy-busy-busy and I’ve got a lot of nifty updating to do. 

Outside of looking for my job teaching English at an eikaiwa (Conversational English School) and preparing for a couple of upcoming interviews, I’ve been shopping for some of the things that a baby needs- things we had in America but couldn’t take with us. Like a quick-folding stroller. They’re big news in Japan right now because strollers take up a lot of space on the trains, and trains are the life-blood of the metropolis. 

Plenty of room now, but wait for RUSH HOUR!!!

A lot of Japanese riders (younger ones, especially) are annoyed at mothers with strollers because technically, six people can stand in the same amount of space. AS IF WE WEREN’T ALL BABIES WITH MOTHERS ONCE! I say, let’s not make it harder on mothers than they already have it! Either let them in and SHADDUP or provide them space, like an extra car for those with strollers, wheelchairs and walkers, etc. Don’t take it out on the future generation, folks. That’s the end of that soapbox. Phew! 

So anyway, while shopping for strollers, here’s yet another example I found of why Japan should hire me to check their English:

Colorplus = Success!!----------------------------------------------------------- FAIL!!!!

I guess you need to pay the extra 2,000 yen if you want spellcheck.

After being chastised by a sweaty baby-store employee for taking pictures in his store, I stopped at the local Daibutsu with Mom and Dad and looked around, snapped a few shots and picked up a traditional charm for a friend who can use it. 

Daibutsu basically mean HUGE-UNGEOUS Buddha and is one of those amazing ancient-looking I-drove-a-DeLorean-at-88mph places you’ll find in the middle of a suburb. They look like places that don't belong in the 21st century, is what I'm trying to say. But I'm glad they are here. I honestly don’t know how old or new this one is and I’m not even sure if it’s a temple or a shrine. Even some Japanese people get them mixed up! But it doesn’t matter in the end because people just come here from time to time for a bit of positivity in their lives. 

Among some of the great traditional architecture and gardens are these little statues of the seven gods. 

Only one of them, third from the left, is female- and she’s the goddess of  DUN-DUN-DUNNNNN… beauty. No points for originality there! This photo is not her:

You can buy little tokens and place them in front of the god in charge of whatever you need help with. This guy is in charge of money. Very popular. 

We finally got to go up to Hanamaki and introduce Kyte to his great-grandpa. Hanamaki is in Iwate prefecture (like city and state, respectively) and that’s the prefecture that was hit hard by the tsunami. Fortunately, Hanamaki is far enough inland that it wasn’t affected that much. The place is GORGEOUS. If you’ve ever seen My Neighbor Totoro, that’s what the landscape is like (if you haven’t seen it, DO). 

It’s way north of Tokyo, a couple hours via shinkansen (bullet train). And that’s saying something cause the land-speed of those things is about 300km/h (186mph). Kyte had never been on a train before and we were wondering how he would fair. Just another playroom for him! When an express BLASTS through a station at full-speed, it’ll stop your heart and such the air out of your lungs. But when you’re in them, they’re quiet, smooth, spacious and comfortable. You can even swivel your row of seats around to face the people behind you, as you can see from the video, across the aisle. 

And the seats both recline and slide forward more than they do on airplanes, so napping is easy. And the trains are so frequent that they're rarely crowded, and there are no security hassles to get on one... yet. Why take a plane? We need to lay more track!

Hanamaki is country-side, very agricultural. If you’ve ever thought that its stereotyping Japanese country-side to think of wrinkled old men wearing big hats hunched over bright green rice paddies interrupted by small groves of lush trees with forested hills rising steeply under the rolling white clouds- it’s not. That’s what it’s like. Cosmos growing six feet tall along the roadside and a mile between people. The shinkansen gets you from Tokyo to That in about 5 minutes. So we visited Grandpa and introduced him to his first great-grandchild and took 1.27 million photos and eventually were off to lunch (for dessert: ice-cream cones so tall you have to eat them with chopsticks) 

...and then to our hotel at some of the famous Hanamaki Onsen!

Onsen are natural hot springs, fresh pure hot mineral water bubbling up from the ground, and Hanamaki has several and they often have nice hotels built over them. From what I’d always heard, they were more than just a nice hot bath in the wilds of Japan. They been long thought to have medical use, so people come from all over the world to soak in them. Don’t worry, though- I’m not saying that you’re gonna be climbing into some disease-ridden bog of nasty human waste-water. These things are clean, and our hotel offered both private and non-private, indoor and outdoor options. 

Some other guy's photo of our non-private men's bath.

The non-private ones are separated male and female. So we got checked in, a process that comes with a traditional bowl of maccha (Green Tea) and azuki (sweet red bean paste). Yum!

Yumi and I started by reserving a private indoor spring, and after the initial shower to rinse out my deodorant and buckets of hair gel we...(BIG BLACK CENSOR BAR). That's just a little fiction for the ladies. 

The hotel provides everyone with yukata (like bathrobes but you can wear them in public).

 So we all went to dinner in ours.

They don’t withhold anything for the dinners in these joints. All kinds of things appear on the table. I took pictures of the initial spread but they kept bringing more and more and I just had to stop. I’ve never tasted half of what I ate that night, nor can I name it. Some of the things I couldn’t tell if they used to swim around or if they were pulled out of the ground, but it was all quality stuff. As you can see from some of the photos and video, they light little fires under some of the food and it cooks there right in front of you.

That all conked me out pretty hard so I woke up after a good night’s sleep to find out that Mom and Yumi had somehow woken up at 3:30am and decided to take another dip in the hot springs! The non-private ones are open 24-7. Also, Dad woke up at 4am and went as well! What’s with these guys?! I know a hot soak feels great and all, but so does SLEEP! And plus, there are bears out there, man! No kidding, they post signs. 

Well, the next morning, after Kyte and I woke up (some of us have some sense) and ate at the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet (of more weird things you’d never think of as breakfast food in Iowa) Dad wanted to take one last dip before checking out. So I went along with him. I didn’t exactly relish the idea of bathing all nekkid with other men, curse my American prudishness! It’s just not something I’ve even gotten into the habit of. Plus, the guys here were Olde! The hotel was mostly populated by members of a high-school reunion that must have been from the world’s first high school. I was half-afraid I was going to have to make sure no-one went belly-up mid-bath or give mouth-to-mouth sans dentures. Seriously, though- onsen are great for the elderly.

I didn't take this photo but it is the one Dad and I soaked in.

Turns out it was actually pretty great- no one was at the bath outside, open to the sky and the crows above. So Dad and I had the pool to our "steam our vegetables" in all by ourselves. Or so we thought…

I looked up and Dad was standing, full monty, waving back at a couple of women on a balcony that could juuuust see down to us. Fortunately, it was my wife and Mom. Unfortunately, they had a camera.