Onsen and Creepy Crustaceans! (Thankfully Not in the Same Room...)

On January 2nd, some friends and I went to a hot springs villa in Okayama, which is about a ninety minute drive from Himeji. It rocked!!! I was a little nervous getting naked in front of all my girlfriends, but by the end of the trip I was a professional speed-undresser (unfortunately, I don't think that will do much for my resume)! Being that nudity was the primary state of the trip, I don't have a lot of pictures.

But! Our rooms had the coolest bathrooms in the whole world! Japan definitely knows how to do small...





The toilet paper is underneath the sink; readily accessible when necessary, and duly protected from shower water. Yes! You shower in there too! See the hose running up the wall from the faucet? I don't know how you're supposed to wash your feet, but no space is wasted...

So after oohing and ahhing over our rockin' toilets, we enjoyed the night soaking in outdoor jacuzzis and cooking a meal together. We made nabe, which is a soup you cook in a big bowl on a hot plate in the center of the table. You continually add ingredients (such as cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, onions, and meat or fish), and as the soup cooks, everyone serves themselves. I love the communal aspect of cooking a meal together and sitting around the same meal for a few hours.

And now I will leave you with some food for thought, generously provided by our crab nabe:



Mmmmm...oishii, desu ne? (Mmmmm, delicious huh?)

Himeji Castle!

I live in a city built around a 398 year-old castle. HOW COOL IS THAT?!?! On December 16th I FINALLY visited it! I see it every day, and I ride my bike through its park every time I go downtown, but it still took me a solid four months to see it from the inside out. I went with Junko Doi, who is the mother of one of my first-grade students (remember, first-graders are the equivalent of American seventh-graders). Junko is so sweet; she brought a bunch of her friends, and she paid my entrance fee and arranged a private tour with Yoshiko Nakamura, who speaks impeccable English and knows all there is to know about Japanese history! And she does it on a strictly volunteer basis!

Unfortunately for those of you who aren't coming to visit and won't get the extra-special, historically informative live-action tour, my online version of it will be mainly photographic. There's a reason my stint as a History major lasted less than a semester...but here's what I can remember:

The castle was completed in 1609. It was not inhabited; rather, it was built as a testament to the power of the Tokugawa Shogunite government. In the event of an attack, all the samurai living within the castle complex were to defend the main tower from destruction. Fortunately it was never attacked, and because of its long history, American troops made a conscious decision not to bomb it during WWII. It was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1993.

As soon as you are inside the central complex, there is no direct route to the main tower. It is literally a maze to the base of the tower, and you are continually tricked until you reach the top. Ceilings get lower, doorways get narrower, and there is even a hidden level (visual trickery from the outside, achieved with the design of low eaves). So once inside, you're farther from the top than you think you are. And Himeji City still reflects this design to protect the castle. It is not built on a perfect grid, like Phoenix; the roads are narrow and they don't continue for any respectable length or intersect in any predictable fashion. You have to see it to believe it!

So this was our tour group. Junko is on the left in the front row, and Nakamura-san is next to me on the inside:



This is my view of the castle when I head downtown:



And this, I finally found out, is what my trip downtown looks like from the top of the castle:



[If you double-click this (and any) picture, it should open a larger copy in a new window so you can see it in greater detail.] The first picture, looking at the castle, was snapped right where the road wraps around the right side of the hill in the center of the photo. The view from the castle is looking relatively West-ish, and my apartment is Northwest-ish, near the base of the mountain in the background on the right.

And these are some of my favorite pictures from inside the castle grounds:







Oh! And in the event that the tour of the castle awakens any latent suicidal tendencies, they provide basement accommodations on your way out:



?!

Happy New Year!