Cold Hot Cold

Confused? So is my body!

After experiencing Sydney’s second hottest ever day I flew back into the midst of one of Japan’s coldest winters, and headed to Kyoto, renowned for its cold winters. Transport truly lives up to Japan’s reputation of being exorbitantly expensive. To cross the bridge and get off Shikoku, the island I live on, costs about AUD$60 one-way, whether you car or train it. Thus you can count the number of times I’ve done it without opening your mouth. A weekend clubbing in Osaka could easily eat up a month’s expenses!

But here I was at 7:30 in the morning in the heart of Kansai, the region that covers Kyoto, Osaka and Nara. I didn’t have to be back at work for three days. Santa brought me a pretty decent digital camera for Xmas and temples covered in snow was just too good an opportunity to pass up. So I unzipped my duffel bag and my pack and transferred everything I wouldn’t need for the next three days into one and couriered it off to my bosses house. Yup, In Japan they have this nifty service at the airport where they send your bags on separately for relatively little cash. I think its cause there isn’t enough room on the regular trains for people to struggle on with suitcases and the like.

Almost broke after buying a pack full of books and various other necessities, I declined the shinkansen (bullet train) and caught a common old garden coach to Kyoto. Travelling at 300km/hr will have to wait! I’ve started referring to Japan as ‘home’ and it felt really good to be back as we hooned alongside the Seto Ohashi. As we passed the Kyoto City sign it started to snow and I started to jump up and down in my chair from excitement. I’d been dreaming of snow in Kyoto since I figured out a couple of months back I would have some time to spend there.

Kyoto, the historical and current day seat of Japanese culture. I pushed aside concerns it would be too touristy and a great anti-climax, and focussed on the excitement and the fact I was going in one of the quietest periods of the year, just after one of the major holidays when everyone should be back home.

I jumped off the bus outside the massive Kyoto Station, a ten-floored step like edifice containing a huge departo, and set out looking for the information bureau. There had too be one close in Japan’s most touristy and second most famous city. After travelling straight for 24hrs, with a nasty layover in HCM airport, showers was my first priority and sleep the second.

A hotel was in order. The first thing I noticed was how many gaigin there were around. And as gaigin do, they were all trying incredibly hard to ignore each other. It struck me there are three types of gaigin in Kyoto, however the third type are true tourists and thus do not really belong to the gaigin category. The first type is the Kyoto resident gaigin who are the most disdainful of all tourists and try hard not to be associated in anyway with their western counterparts of whatever colour or creed. Then there’s my category, the tourist gaigin, Japanese residents for taxation purposes but still tourists in Kyoto. I’ve got my backpack strapped over my polar fleece and my new camera slung around my neck. I could almost have stepped out of a Kathmandu catalogue. I look like such a backpacker! But I so desperately want to be differentiated from the other camera waving tourists and hang a sign around my neck say “I live here”. Ah, what’s the point! I follow the gaigin trail to the tourist bureau and queue up neatly to reserve a hotel. Unfortunately check-in time is 2 o’ clock across Kyoto and its only 9:30. Luckily I can drop my bag off at the hotel, but sleep’s a no no for another 4 hours. There’s a public bath across the street though, so a wash and clean clothes are in the near future.

The sento, (Lonely Planet informs me true onsen originate from natural springs, but I can clearly see the running tap in this one) is one of the smallest I’ve ever seen, on a par with the Japanese Baths in Collingwood, not as nice, and nearly as expensive. I guess I am smack bang in the middle of Kyoto, and the proprietors figure they can get away with the cost, being right next to the station. However, the woman who apparently run the place is lovely, and starts to give me the low down on onsen etiquette, clearly mistaking me for an ignorant tourist until I interrupt her with a genki “wakkatta” (understood) and she correctly refiles me in the second category! Just to make clear, interruption is the height of politeness in Japanese society, as long as you do it in the affirmative. It signals to the speaker that you are listening and they have your attention.

For those armchair tourists out there, here’s how the sento/onsen ritual goes. After greetings and small talk about the weather have been exchanged (it’s even more important here than in Britain) shoes are taken off and stashed in a locker. There’s a well next to the door, which is still technically outside even though you wandered in out of the snow three floors up. You step out of your shoes here onto the inside floor and pick up said shoes. Then you empty the entire contents of your pack onto the floor in the search for a clean pair of underwear, as well as T-shirt socks etc and the all important brand new thermal you’ve been dreaming of since you lost your last one at the beginning of winter. All around you are people relaxing, talking, watching TV, smoking, waiting for loved ones and acquaintances. The sento experience is one of buck nakedness. Since the westerners demanded trading rights or war in the Meiji period, bathing has been gender segregated cause the whiteys freaked out about people bathing together. The Japanese women at least, I can’t speak for the men, have taken this enforced modesty well to heart and now wander around with a rightly named “modesty towel” draped over their private bits.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. So, clothes collected I’m handed a modesty towel, about the size of a small hand towel, and rent another big one to dry myself with. I head into the women’s side, a long thin room, lockers over at one side and what my mother would call a vanity unit, next to the door, a row of sinks with accompanying hairdryers, brushes and basic skincare products. I strip, dump my clothes and take my smelly body into the bath room or wet room. I’m confronted with a circular bath in the middle or the room and about 5 or six wash stations on two walls. Climbing into the communal bath is simply not done, but my mischievous side wants to do it just to see what would happen! However not today, tired in a strange city. I wash and scrub and wash and scrub and collapse in the sauna where an inordinately skinny woman is performing a strange rubbing ritual, jumping out, dowsing herself with water and then doing it all over again at two minute intervals. At my gym onsen, the woman perform relay marathon stays of ten minutes interspersed with cold dowsings and ten more minutes, for perhaps whole afternoons. I think they believe it will help them lose weight, or maybe it’s a general circulation thing, but I’ve never seen anyone pummel themselves with a bobbly massage like tool with such fervour whilst in a sauna. I’ve never seen this particular bobbly like massage tool before either.

After I’ve made myself vaguely presentable, dressed and run a hair dryer over my hair before it turns to icicles outside I spot the massage chair. Ahaa, the massage chair, the heaven sent gift for weary travellers. Sit down, lie back relax, drop a buck in the slot and have this strange monster grind rollers up and down your body from your head to your calves for ten minutes. There’s something bizarre about having a machine circularly massage your back, just miss a spot so you try to move into the right position, and then massage your head. But so good, I think, dropping another 100yen coin into its waiting mouth.