Onsen Nearby

I found this nice little onsen (hot spring) place in Tsukishima near where I live. After a long jog, it is rather nice to take a hot bath in the open bath house, the water is hot, women in the onsen are working so hard to wash their hair and body. The temperature is actually rather alarmingly hot (46C), I can barely stay for 1 minute, need to take a break and spash myself with bucket of cold water. I looked like a cooked shrimp when coming out of the huge bathtub.

I think taking a bath outside of your house is a great experience. The process is as following: walk to the senton (錢湯), wash up, soak in hottub, listen to woemen greeting each other, dry up, relax after the short period of dizziness after hotbath, put on lotion, walk home, enjoy the breeze of the night. Everything is essential part of onsen visit, hard to leave out any one of those.

The local onsen I went to was discovered by accident. I always like Tsukishima area, it is rather old community, not as trendy as Ebisu or Meguro (young Japanese are proud of having those addresses). Somehow these shitamachi (下町)　preserves the sort of the old Japan, without much of the western influence, not quite refined in a way but very intersting. Tsukishima () is famous for the monjayaki, which I never like. But I like the automosphere, love to walk around the busy street looking at crowds roaming around for the best monjayaki restaurant in mid Summer nights. In the midst of heat and noisy, oh my god, there is an onsen house. I made a mental note that I will come here one day.

The funny thing about Japanese senton place is that you walk in and pay the fee to the old lady sitting on high up in at the divider between girls and boy's sector. Today it was a old man sitting there, oh my god, what is happening? Is it because there are only old women and kids coming to the girls sector therefore it doesn't matter? What if some 30 something come into the hotbath house?

I didn't want to back out (hey, leaving the bath house after paying is more strange, isn't it). I deliberately found a locker where I can knee down to strip, pretending I don't notice anything walking bravely toward the bath area all naked. As I soaked in the water, I cannot help but thinking if the old man is peeping through the steamed grass door. I guess I was thinking too much, as I left the bath house (again, hiding myself behind the waist high locker block to get dress), he was laughing hard on the TV show.