Highlight from Week 1: Kinosaki

On the Bantan line

This day afforded us a rare glimpse of the “backwoods” of Japan (i.e. fewer skyscraping tenements per square kilometre), as we journeyed on a slow and rickety train from Himeji across central and northern Hyogo. Our destination was the resort town of Kinosaki, which is famous for its many onsen, though unfortunately, given the miserable weather, we didn’t get a chance to visit any of them. Instead, we took a ropeway up Mt Onsenji, stopping along the way to look around Onsenji temple.

The view of Kinosaki and the surrounding area from the summit of Onsenji is said to be breathtaking: on a clear day you can see the Sea of Japan.
This was not a clear day. (Click the image above to see a slideshow of Kinosaki and Onsenji.)

But even in bad weather, Kinosaki is a picturesque little village: very European-looking (though I really have no basis for comparison), and Emma and I hope to return soon. We made the most of things by soaking our feet in a small hot-spring by the side of the main street, with the intention of visiting a few onsen after booking into our hotel, but that didn’t eventuate. The hotel in question, a ryokan, turned out to be a fair distance away from Kinosaki, and the constant rain (it never pours, but it rains in Japan) stranded us there. And so began our first experience of traditional Japanese accommodation.

(Click the image above to see a slideshow of the ryokan)

It would be putting things mildly to describe the ryokan as austere. From the outside it looked like the kind of establishment that in a Western country would normally play host to marital infidelity and drug deals. We were greeted in the lobby by a friendly old lady who spoke no English, but with the aid of Emma’s Japanese was able to show us upstairs to our rooms. These consisted of a tatami room for sleeping, a small anteroom for removing your shoes, and another anteroom by the window containing a washbasin, a mirror, and an inoperative fluorescent lamp. The youngest item in the room was Emma. At the end of the hall were the toilets, all of which were squats (but more on that later). The old lady returned with tea and informed us that dinner would be served at 7pm, so we changed into our yukata, had a few photos taken with Mum, and then headed downstairs.

We were expecting to eat in the dining room, but our host showed us instead to a smaller room off an adjacent corridor. There we found, to our delight, a mountain of noodles, rice and vegetables, and a nabe pot bubbling away.

Better still, since this part of Hyogo is crab country, there was crabmeat on the plate in quantities for which you’d have to mortgage your house in Perth. We ordered 3 beers, and our host returned with longnecks, at no extra charge! Though Dad found the concept of cooking for yourself in a hotel confusing, the ryokan all of a sudden did not seem as overpriced as it first appeared.

Copious amounts of beer and a very full stomach forced me to confront an aspect of the Japanese lifestyle I had somehow hitherto managed to avoid, though I knew someday it would catch up with me. Yes, I was obliged to use a squat toilet. I’ll say two things about using the squat toilet, and leave it at that. (1) The squatting position definitely makes for a very fast and efficient method of “purifying oneself,” so to speak, which may explain why the Japanese haven’t yet abandoned it. (2) The Japanese believe that the squat toilet is more hygienic than the Western toilet, since you don’t make any contact with the seat. This sounds like a good theory, but it actually takes a great deal of logistics and forward planning to make it work. Your pants and underwear are bunched around your ankles, and you want to avoid having these touch the rim of the toilet. On the other hand, squatting puts a lot of pressure on the bladder, meaning that number twos are usually accompanied by number ones, and you definitely don’t want your underwear getting in the way of the stream. Your spare third and fourth arms, the ones you keep packed away for just such an occasion—these you use to balance yourself against the walls. Since I was only wearing a yukata at the time, and since the cubicle had high doors, I ended up stripping naked. And that’s probably more information than you need.

The second best feature of our ryokan experience—the crab nabe was definitely the best—was the fact that it contained a hot spring. Nothing too fancy—no sauna or iron bath or anything like that—just a simmering hot bath that stayed hot. Like being boiled alive—the nice way. I had the place to myself, too: there were very few other guests in the ryokan, and Dad wasn’t game enough to try it, though Mum joined Emma in the women’s onsen.

The next morning we were called to breakfast in the dining room at around 7am. I wasn’t expecting crumpets and Weet Bix, but nor was I expecting a whole dried fish to greet me as I sat down to eat.

And you know what? I ate it—well, everything except the head. (It was delicious.) The raw egg, on the other hand, was a bridge too far even for me; Mum found a use for it in the miso soup. We had planned that day to stop in Amanohashidate on our way home, but it was still raining and we decided it wasn’t worth it. Emma, making small talk, said as much to the host, who replied with “Ame no hashidate!” Even the Japanese can make Dad jokes.