Travel Journal – Friday 16/4 – 2010

Shoes, electrocution and pain.

Today we slept for quite some time. I think the clock was around 9 when I woke up but I believe that we didn’t eat breakfast before 12ish sometime. After this we slowly got ready to go to another sento¹ that I had asked Miiko about the evening before how to find this place again since I was uncertain about it.

Well, we then went to find it on the other side of the train station. Well, we didn’t find it at first but instead we first found a place where we could get tickets for the Ghibli Museum. We have been thinking about it on and off but other things have come in the way and we just haven’t come around to book some tickets. So today we decided to do it when we had time and found a place. With help from the shop clerks and our small Japanese skills we managed to get two tickets for 16:00 on the 30^th of April. This is good even though I now think that we should have gone for some of the earlier tickets.

Then we asked them at Lawsons about the Sento and went out again to find it. On our way there we saw a shoe-shop and I went in to find some shoes. And actually I found two really, really good shoes for 5800 JPY². But the Shopkeeper was kind enough to give me 800 JPY off so I only needed to pay 5000 JPY³. It’s really good shoes that would definitely cost a lot more in Sweden so I’m satisfied. They will probably work for  me another year or two, as the ones I had with me here.

So with new shoes we finally went to the big Sento. This sento is quite different from the small sento we went to before. The small sento only has like two pools while this sento have nine pools. One cold pool, one big main pool, one massage pool, one pot pool, one outside pool and one cold⁴ pool. But then you should know that Sento is not a play ground. You sit still in the pools and enjoy it and so on. The water is often around 40 degrees and most pools differ not only buy size but how it shall help your body and sometimes also with different kinds of bath salts in the water that have special properties. Bath salts though is more common in Onsens⁵.

Anyway the most fun thing in this Onsen is the Electric Chair and the Cold Pool. Unfortunately I had told Drak, plus that he read my Journal from last time, about the Electric Chair. If I hadn’t it would have been very funny to trick him into the chair. Now he was prepared when he finally worked up the guts to sit in one. I sat in the chairs many times. It’s like chairs in the pool with small holes in the wall where you are supposed to rest your back where small electric current is shooting out. This helps your muscles loose up, believe it or not. It’s healthy for your back and the rest body depending on how long you sit and how much of your muscles that are exposed to the current. I think that it can be pleasant but if you sit too close some muscles twitch so much that it becomes somewhat painful but afterwards you will loosen up quite much which is a good feeling.

The cold pool wasn’t that special and I guess you understand if you try to put into context. Say that you have been sitting in a pool with 40 degrees for about 2 hours and then you jump into a pool with barely 12 degrees. You go figure how it feels. Though bathing in a hole in the ice is quite more shocking while this can be quite pleasant since being so hot can make you a little lightheaded.

Well, after this we went to the evening prayer with Miiko. Unfortunately I hadn’t eaten so about halfway into the prayer I started to feel intense pain in my stomach. The usual pains returned a short time ago because of stress. But I’ve tried my best the past week to suppress it with eating extra carefully and also consuming more sour milk than usual. When we came here I pressed on the matter of sour milk too and this was actually the first time it happened. But well, as soon as we got to Kita Urawa we bought some Curry and went back home where I rested while Drak bought resupplies to our breakfast. The rest of the evening I watched the movie Hard Candy. A movie Drak already had seen, while he was listening to Lord of Chaos⁶. We went to bed late today too, around half past three, but it’s most likely due to the fact that we have been inactive the past few days, but that is about to change…

Best Regards,
Herid Fel

1. A Japanese public bathhouse – the only means to get cleaned up around here ↩

2. 452 SEK, or lower ↩

3. 390 SEK ↩

4. Only 34 degrees ↩

5. Real hot springs where the water is coming directly from a volcanic spring and isn’t heated in any other way ↩

6. The twelfth book in the series The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan ↩