Short view of Takaragawa (宝川温泉) I
Everything happened a typical Friday evening after the Japanese lesson… After taking my backpack with my swim suite and all my other stuff, I headed to the Tokyo Station with all the intention to get the Shinkansen to Joumo Kougen in Gunma (群馬県).
Once on the Shinkansen, I met all the others. The wait was getting longer, and when we were chatting, while reading a magazine I found this:
What seems to be a retrokaraoke system, you know, to sing to yourself… They really doesn’t know what else to invent, and if we see the picture on the right of a chairburguer… no comments.
Once we got to the Joumo Kougen station, around 19h, we tried to find a place where to eat something before heading to the onsen. Mission impossible, who the hell are we to try to eat something at 19h! at that time all the village was completely dead! the only thing we got was a warm cup of tea from a vending machine (god bless that machine).
Seeing that there were nothing to eat we decided to get a couple of taxis (for 9 people) and head to Takaragawa. This was an odyssey as the only one that spoke a bit of japanese (almost nothing yet) was me… at least I learnt how to count taxis.
When we got to the onsen I was feeling anxious about starting with my ninja gestures…
So I chose the ninja gesture of the sleeping dragon dressed in a smooth Japanese Yukata. After the ninja gestures and the compulsory pictures, I realized the amount of people we were there:
Well, time to splash the ass! Step 1: Previous general shower.
It’s not me being bad taking pictures (I am) but the steam in my camera’s lens on entering the room… As the onsen tradition reminds, before entering rotenburo (thermal exterior bath), it’s needed to have a shower, sat on that mini chair and splashing water over the body with a small bucket. For the first time I felt like Shin-Chan
Once cleaned, we were heading to the first natural pool when suddenly… Oh nooo! to get to the pool we must pass the first test! Zamburgers! Straigt from Takeshi’s Castle!
At least we weren’t being pursued by the chinese Kudeiro (くでいろさん).
It was a dark night so I couldn’t take any good picture of the pools, only say that I went to bed at 3 a.m. cooked like a sprawn.
To be continue…