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north east asia galleries |
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SAHAKO Hot Springs Resort (phone: 0246-43-0385) might be the cheaptest onsen in town set in an Edo Era style building, but it nonetheless brims with advanced tech lurking behind all the woodwork. This is Japan after all, there is a reputation to upkeep! You get to create your own PIN for the electronic lockers you store your valuables in, for example, while the entrance tickets are dispensed by a vending machine. New tech aside, most of the customers at Sahako are old. (This is Japan after all, the ageing of the population and all that...) The baths kind of reminded me of my two weeks in police custody back in 2007... we had a cool bathroom in the detention center but were only allowed to use it once every five days. In some ways, the mens' bathroom at Sahako was more intimidating than the bathroom I had enjoyed at the detention center in 2007. Back then I only had yakuza and wardens to contend with; here I had a room full of old Tohoku yokels! Perhaps it was just my imagination, but I had the feeling I was intruding on their turf as the only foreigner in a place full of regulars. This is not my first time in an onsen by any means, but I still managed to commit a faux pas within a couple of minutes of entering the bathroom. Soaping up before jumping into the tub like you are supposed to do, I inadvertently managed to annoy an old guy. I think he accused me of taking his stool and told me to move, that was the gist of what he said. So I moved to a different stool, and resumed my ablutions. There were two baths: one hot, the other even hotter. I am kind of a wimp when it comes to hot baths... spend more than a few minutes in the water and I start to feel faint. Kenichi, on the other hand, was in heaven (he's a real Japanese, after all!) He can immerse me under the table... and he also demolish a whole huge donburi in the time it takes me to work out which little jug is the one with the soy sauce in it. After about an hour at Sahako, we went to the nearby Genta Sushi Restaurant for the massive sushi donburi (1000 Yen). Topped with hotate (raw scallops), ikura (salmon roe), ebi (prawns) and other oceanic delights, this dish proved to be too much of a good thing for me. I couldn't finish it. This elicited the inevitable cries of "Mottai nai!" ("Waste not, want not!") from both Kenichi and one of the waitresses. I wish I could have eaten all that rice, just as I wish I could have stayed in that hot sulphuric water longer. Perhaps I was just tired from my 4.20am start to the day...
RAMEN BURGERS, AND OTHER FUKUSHIMA FOODS!
Tourism Information of Fukushima Prefecture
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