Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Before going on the trip, I had found information about a fabulous bath house, basically across the street from where we were staying. My original intention was to go there every evening.

I did not waste any time. I convinced June to join me on the first night. We put on the ryokan's yukata and went out into the rainstorm to the bath house. The bath house Daikokuyu sentou, as you can see by the pictures, is beautiful. The only reason I did not feel like returning the other evenings was that the water temperature was truly scalding. We came out red like lobsters. This was not my first time to Japanese bath houses, so I was expecting it to be hot.

Sentou are different from onsen, the latter ones are hot springs. Please learn more about sentou here.

This picture reminded me of June and I fighting the wind and rain in our yukata after the bath on our way back to the ryokan. It was hard to keep a yukata properly closed in such a situation.

( Picture of bath house from http://klikdotsystems.jp/stronapolska/files/rok2002/sento.html)

This picture is for Tommy, Ian and Milo. During a memorable lunch in Nikko, Japan, we had a discussion about Tanuki, a Japanese animal. I was informing them about the mythical properties of the tanuki that appear in Japanese folk tradition. But they had doubts about my tales. I promised them an illustration that I found at
http://darumamuseum.blogspot.com/2007/06/tanuki-scrotum.html.
And so if you look carefully...

These manga images are from Ando-Natsu (I think). They represent Naka-mise street in Asakusa after the store have closed. These pictures remind me of the afternoon after we went to visit Bandai. Many of us went back to Asakusa. At that time some of the stores were closing. I took a couple of picture of the closed store fronts because I thought they were amazing.