Hakone - Part 1: Bathing in Coffee, Tea, Wine, Sake and Rose Petals

Japan is a country that loves its natural hot springs. It being a volcanic island - you'll find hot springs EVERYWHERE. In college in Utah, I did a fair amount of hiking and when we would happen upon a natural hot spring it would usually be inhabited by a few naked hippies. So we moved on. And when I was a missionary in Japan, we were not allowed to enter into the hot springs...so I am a relative late-comer to the hot spring (called onsen in Japanese) party.

Hakone is a resort town close to Mt. Fuji, two plus hours south and west of Tokyo. And there are tons of onsen in the region. Onsen are typically segregated into mens baths and womens baths. You strip down, shower off and then soak in the various pools they have. Being onsen newbies we felt a conservative approach was in order here! So we elected to try the family onsen, where everyone was in bathing suits. Think Raging Waters but for hot tubs. It was awesome.

There are seemingly dozens of different kinds of pools you can get into. One outdoor pools has a water slide and a waterfall. An indoor pool is shallow and has balls and toys that kids can throw and play with. One was a salt pool where you could float. Then they get to be a bit more outrageous. One pool is bright pink and has tons of flower petals floating around and smells like a rose garden. Still other pools have coffee in it, or wine, or green tea, or Japanese sake, or charcoal...or my personal favorite fish...yes, those fish that will come up to your legs and feet and eat away the dead skin. That pool was aptly named Dr. Fish and was the most popular pool by far. It was gimmicky, but it was fun. We found ourselves hopping from one pool to the next. Anthon got into it. Ella even got into it. She was so calm and relaxed wading around in our arms in these various pools.

The funniest part was in the wine pool. Three times a day an onsen worker trots out with a huge bottle of wine and like a rock concert the crowd (in their swimsuits) starts crowding the man. Kids were crying, wine was flowing everywhere. We threw our hands in there to get our hands on the wine and upon having some poured into our hands we just looked at it and thought, "Ok, we're not going to drink it...now what?" If you're familiar with the Mormon religion, then by now you're catching on to the irony of the situation - we don't drink coffee, tea, or alcohol, yet we're soaking in it. I think that increased the novelty of it for us. They say it helps to soften the skin. But the only difference in my skin was that it smelled like coffee after the coffee pool, wine after the wine pool and so on. This leads me to the question, can one get drunk via osmosis? :)

Ok, so I'm a full fledged convert and love this place, Yunessun. I'm already thinking about when we can come back.

If you haven't seen it already, Shelley posted about our trip to Hakone as well. Click any of the pictures or this link to see more pictures from Yunessun Hot Springs.