by Mary Annear
Saturday afternoon at the "Izu-Onsen Resort Place" (actual name). i have a shower, slip into the inside onsen and peer out at the hot spring on the other side of the glass. After warming everything up, I slide open the door and quickly dart outside to a ridiculously open rotemburo.
I hear Aaron laughing on the "boys" side. I notice that if I were to sneak over to the boys' wall I could probably have a good perve through the cracks. They could probably do the same. Did we? Did they? Well, you should have been there to find out!
Any sense of embarrassment about this is quickly abandoned, when I realise that I am already nude with 13 people. Now this would usually rate as an excellent weekend haul for me, but alas, they are all girls.
It is no secret that I love onsen. I love them because the people there are so relaxed about something that people in most of our home countries are so uptight about. Nudity, boobs, bums, funny wobbles, tattoos and piercings ... it is all just there, and there is something about relaxing in an onsen that takes away any embarrassment, judgment or shame. I like that a lot.
Which is why, after the Saturday afternoon soak I had a Saturday night soak, and even a Sunday morning soak. Is three onsen in less than 24 hours too much? No, my friends, it is not. The only difficult thing about it all was to stop my body from floating away after gorging myself at dinner, and to stop my head from flying away as a result of hte red wine and umeboshi the following morning.
Umeboshi, I hear you ask? Well ... none of us actually brought umeboshi with us, but in the course of the evening, Jack had made friends with some Japanese people down the hall from our very big and beautiful Japanese tatami rooms. These people basically gatecrashed our party and then spent the rest of hte night trying to force-feed umeboshi and other savoury delights into our already intoxicated bodies. Yes, the train ride home was a delight the next day.
The first time that I stayed at this hotel was last summer. At that time, two of us stayed in a twin room for 1000 yen each. This included the onsen, but not any food. This time the price was still cheap, but we had to have dinner and breakfast included, bringing it up to 7000 yen. Still a bargain! The food was great: very traditional, great fish, and the breakfast the next morning would have been great if I could have handled it. The miso soup was good though.
Izu-Okawa Resort Place is located near Izu-Okawa station on the Ito line in Yamanashi-ken. You can call them at 055-722-6221.