This town is famous for its onsens (public baths) hence its name - Nosawa Onsen. They are literally dotted all around the town and range from slightly dingy / dodgy concrete tubs right up to plush tile and wood complexes. The locals are into the onsen thing big time (as are many of our lodge mates) and use them daily. One enters into a locker room, strips butt naked and proceeds to a washing area and to sit on a small stool in front of a set of taps with a hand shower device. This is where you wash thoroughly (a must) sitting down, quite a few of the Japanese will sit there for ages, soaping and scrubbing furiously. Once all this is taken care of, you can then enter the onsen itself. The one we went to nearby our lodge (they're segregated into male & female areas), was roughly the size of a small pool and deep enough to sit with the water level up to your neck - you can soak as long as you wish with your fellow onseners (yeah I made that up). At the end of it all you just shower down and you're done!
The water for the onsens is piped from natural hot mineral springs that bubble out of the mountain at the village level. There's quite a few of them and they are of varying temperature. One, over near the temple, is even used as a cooking onsen by the villagers. We've eaten eggs cooked in there...yummy!
There's so much hot water bubbling out around the place that they actually pipe it under the roads to heat them. This keeps them snow free, which is good but a little weird. It's a little hard reconciling the sound of car tires on wet roads with being in the snow. There's lots of warm water running down all the sides of the roads too in deep concrete gutters. When it's snowing lots (like today) the locals are busy scooping snow off pathways etc and dumping it into these gutters where it melts quickly and is carried away. Misch finds the sound of the running water everywhere strange as it reminds her of the snow melt in Australia during spring. Many of the car parks have a steel pipe with holes in it running at ground level on the uphill side and it just squirts hot/warm water across the car park surface to keep them snow free, sort of like a car park soaker hose really.
Blizzard here today, dumping snow big time and high winds. The upper mountain was closed down around midday because of the weather. We got some great knee deep powder runs all over the place today and most of them were on piste! The wind is supposed to abate tonight and then the snow will continue through to the weekend. Tomorrow morning is looking good!
b.t.w. the little link below the posts titled comments allows you to comment of any of the posts. Do so if your inclined, it would be nice to hear from you.
1 comment:
Good words.
Post a Comment