Yesterday was quite the adventure. A friend of mine invited me to come with him and some other friends to the Jozankei Onsen. The onsen is a Japanese style public bath that is very relaxing and is supposed to “rejuvenate you.” For anyone planning on coming to Japan, an onsen trip is a must. There are pretty much two kinds of Onsens, natural hotsprings and simulated ones. The one we went to was a natural hot spring.

To begin our adventure, our intentions were to get on a bus and ride it the aprox 70min. to the resort town of Jozankei then pile out and enjoy the relaxation of the pools.

What really happened was far from that.

It started out ok we found the right bus and paid the 750 yen it would take to ride all the way out of Sapporo to Jozankei. However, as soon as we got on the bus we were not totally sure what stop to get off at. Our only guide was this small paragraph in the Sapporo tourist pamphlet that said to get on this stop and get off at the Jozankei Stop and that it’d take 70min. Hah! So we stayed on that bus a whole 70 minutes and then we got concerned. We didn’t know if this place was or wasn’t the infamous “Jozankei” we read about. So gleaming over maps we decided that at (what we thought was) stop 25 we’d get off check the map and try to find this place. So we did, stop 25 came up and we got off. Too bad that after 10min when the bus had left we realized we were about 2 kilometers from Jozankei. “Oh” my friend said, “2K isn’t far, why when I was in the military….” Yeah right we said. Almost like clock work we were peering over the bus time table at the bus stop we were at. We were 3 American guys, and a British guy trying to figure out when the next bus came. So after 20min trying to decipher “the code,” we were almost at a loss when a bus showed up. Naturally everyone set aside their arguments about what bus to take or if this meant 2 minutes or 2 hours. The bus took off and we were on it, my friend said, “the bus should take a left up here” … it didn’t. “ok, ok, it’s somewhere over here!” nope. “Man, ok well it’ll turn left just you see.” Well, 20 minutes passed and eventually it did but as soon as it turned, it stopped, “Everybody out, last stop!” The bus driver bellowed. We were puzzled, the place he dropped us out at didn’t look a hot spring at all. In fact it looked like the bus has taken us to some farm village in Costa Rica. The four of us asked, “is this Jozankei?” at this, the bus driver looked at us and laughed, “no, sorry.” He closed the door and there we were in the middle of no where, far from Sapporo and with out a clue as to where “Jozankei” was. So we sat at the bus stop waiting, and waiting, relaxation at that point was far from our minds. 15 minutes went by with no sound of a bus. We were confused, anxious, you name it. My friend and another guy decided to walk to a store near by to ask for directions. As they were walking off, I saw that same bus, the one that dropped us off in this mystery land, come back the other way. I ran out and stopped him and asked, “hey, just how do we get to Jozankei?” the bus driver squinted at me and replied, “sugi no busu wa norimasu” which we took to mean the next bus was the one we should take, but when did that come? It was nearly 3:30pm and we had left at 1pm so we were pretty skeptical about *just waiting* we asked the driver for a timetable and at this the bus driver hesitated and then preceded to rumble through hundreds of timetables like he was some master of the Japanese Transportation Time Space Continuum. It was hopeless, he didn’t know, we didn’t know, we were lost and we were miles away from any kind of English help. Hopes were low as the bus driver peered over tables of numbers, as he did, I heard the faint rumble of diesel as a lazy bus emerged from the corner of a building. The bus driver perked up and pointed to that bus like a hound finding a bird, “that one!”

We jumped, and ran like the wind to get on that bus, waving and thanking the bus driver as we hustled to the other bus. We had made it at last. The bus rumbled off towards the mountains and with in another 10-15 minutes we entered the resort town of Jozankei Hot Springs. The ordeal in our minds were over, we were exhausted from the whole thing, now it was time to rest.

The Spa experience…

Nothing makes you feel more like a foreigner then an Onsen Spa. Like most everything here, there’s a kinda of ritual to relax. First you can’t enter the onsen with out a towel. There was a minute mart nearby so we all bought a small towel. The spa was roughly 1050 yen (about 10 bucks) with a towel. The experience… Priceless! After paying our fee, we were escorted to lockers in the lobby where we were given a key to put our shoes in. In this locker was a pair of (small) slippers. We put the slippers on and the lady escort asked that we give her the key. In exchange for the “shoe key” we were given another locker key for the dressing room. She escorted us to the dressing room where some of us had to use the bathroom. However, in Japan, the bathroom has a separate “WC” or “Toilet” Slippers. So off with one pair and on with the other, then off with those and on with the other. We were then escorted to a group locker room where we were instructed to put our bags, coats, etc in. So we did. Then standing there we were unsure where to go next. A nice man in the locker room showed us to another room with a bunch of cubby holes. We were to strip down to nothing and then proceed to the spa. This is where it got weird. I felt that I had just gone back to high school track and field’s locker room. We figured, when in Rome… yeah… so into the spa we went, 4 naked white guys without a clue as to what we were walking into. We saw a washing station and so we went there. The room was huge.. There was about 7 or 8 huge pools with varying degrees of mineral water all around. The bathing section was traditional Japanese style i.e. rinse, soap, rinse, shampoo, rinse and then your good to go! As you may imagine there was plenty of giggles and laughs from all of us. Soon we had got over the humility naked thing and were ready for the Japanese experience.

Not sure as to how to proceed now that we were clean, the four of us started testing every pool, moving from one to the other with only a small cheap towel covering us up. The pools were divided between different temperatures. The first we went into was said it was about 40-42 degrees Celsius, others were around 36-39 and then one really hot one. There was also a sauna and a “cold pool” in case you got too hot you could chill out so to speak. With in minutes we had forgot our ordeal and we’r
e relaxing Japanese style in these pools. It was glorious, we just put all our minds at rest and relaxed.

We were in that pool for about 1 and ½ hour when we decided we were properly relaxed. We then began the ritual of wash and rinse then proceeded to the changing room when we got to play the slipper/locker game. Rested and Relaxed we found a bus stop and like clock work the bus showed up and we were on our way back to Sapporo.

The Jozankei Onsen was quite the experience. I’ll have to do that again sometime. I know other onsens are different and now, after doing one, I’m game to try some others around here.

~J out