Ah, that title makes no sense.
First of all, because Okada san takes a ton of pictures and me, well, not so many, my blog posts might be kinda nude. ahaha. Just had to throw that in there. No, really. I’m not sure when I will be getting digital copies of all those pictures (which are totally rad, I’m sure) so you’ll have to live with my crappy photos.
I find myself in a dilemma. I want to write a totally cool story about my weekend, yet I have no totally cool pictures to compliment my awesome writing. On the other hand, if I don’t write anything, people will get angry and start throwing virtual rocks at my site. Thus, causing damage and sadness. What should I do? hmmmmm…
I’m not going to write anything…
Gotcha, I will!
On the weekend, I took part in the 22nd Hokkaido Two-Day March at Toya Lake. It involved me to walk 40km on Saturday around the lake and 10km on Sunday to walk around the island in the middle of lake.
That gives you a nice view of where I was. I didn’t take the picture. I stole it from Wikipedia. Byaah!
Anyways, I woke up at 3am on Saturday, jumped into a van, drove for two hours and arrived in Toyako (the town) around 6am or something. I can’t remember. Actually, yes it was around 6am because the walk started at 7am for those who were to participate in the 40km walk.
I was pumped. The area looked beautiful and I was going to take totally cool pictures. Sadly, I never finished the walk. Nor did Okada san, Kota, or Ken san. We had only managed to get 4km into the walk when it poured. I’m not talking about a little pour, but boy, this was crazy. Did I have an umbrella or a rain jacket? Heck no! I ran to closet tree and hugged that thing like there was no tomorrow. Needless to say I was soaked. Good thing Okada san had an extra plastic bag for which I had placed my backpack in. My stuff would have been destroyed if it weren’t for that plastic bag. After about 20 minutes, a van drove by that thankfully picked the 4 of us up and drove us back to town. We went directly to the hotel, hung our clothes to dry, ate, and slept. We woke up in the afternoon sometime to “finish” the race.
Obviously, we weren’t going to start where we left off. That would be dumb. We started about 300m away from the finish line. This way, we could reap the rewards of finishing the race without, well, you know, finishing the race legitimately. It was a great plan conceived by Okada san. That evening, we attended a party only for those who “completed” the 40km walk. It had awards, food, entertainment, and drunk people. It had the works. This all happened in the 90 minutes I was there. We left early because the crowd was quite older than me and old lady hula dancers just isn’t my thing. I shouldn’t have eaten that much at the party because when we got back to the hotel, we had more food. It was a huge supper and I fought my way through it to eat everything that was given to me. By the way, this scenario has happened many times before. Every time I make food and finish eating, Kota comes over telling me to come to his house to eat. I can’t say no, so off I go to eat more. BURP!
Sunday comes around and we are off to the island in the middle of the lake. This time we finish. Yay! It felt good to actually finish one of the routes. It also felt good to have a checkpoint stamp on my route map. I was missing the checkpoint stamp for the 40km walk, of course.
The drive back home took much longer than the drive to Toyako. Speed limits tend to be less than Canada, and because we were in the mountains, there was only one lane of traffic each way. Combined with the other factors of being a long weekend (Silver Week), leaving in the early evening, and traffic lights, it took almost 4 hours to get home.
You might not care about anything that I have written so far.
AARON WHERE IS THE NUDE PART I CARE SO MUCH ABOUT!!!!!
I’m getting to that. Give me a break.
When we finally arrived at home it was time to hit the local bath house. Kota, Ken san, and I went. I had been to a few onsen’s already, but not a bath house. hmmmmm… how would this differ. At a bath house, you need to bring your own shampoo and soap. Some guys bring stuff to shave their face or what have you, but all I bought were the essentials. At an onsen, soap and shampoo are provided. w00t! This bath house was gender segregated, so phew, no worries there. But I have heard of some being combined. That would be awkward.
A procedure exists in a bath house/onsen which needs to be followed. It is essential that you shower first. And by a shower, I mean a real shower. Not a rinse shower. This is where the soap and shampoo come in. Use those and be sure to be as clean as possible. After you’re done, then you can go to the various areas located around you. Typically you will find a hot tub/hot sping, rinse showers, outdoor hot tub, sauna, cold pool (maybe), and a shock pool (I’m not sure of the name, but essentially it makes your body feel like electricity is being sent through it. It feels really weird and almost on the verge of pain. Very hard to describe).
While were getting out of the shock pool and planning to head for the regular hot bathtub, a lady just walked by me in all of my glory. I instantly looked around at all the other dudes, and no one paid any attention to her. I figured this was normal but of course I was a little shocked that females would attend to the male quarters. She was in and out of the area of few times and I just had to chuckle to myself. I just imagine this happening at home and the outrage it would spur, but here, nothing. I guess it’s not that big of a deal. It’s just very different from Canada and not expected on my part. I probably let you down and my NUDE news, but this was it. I guess this can just be a bit of information for any guys planning to come to Japan and use a bath house. At first I thought it was weird. But once you go a of couple of times, well, you starting forgetting about, uh, certain things and instead enjoy the comfort of the warm water and an unlimited amount of time in a shower.
Well, that’s pretty much all I have to report for now. This post is quite long and I’m sorry about that. I know I probably wasted much of your time but thanks for reading and tuning in. I really appreciate it for those that check the site once and awhile.
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