Onsen

Many workplaces in America have a year-end Christmas/New Year's party. Everyone drinks and has dinner on the company dime, and aside from maybe some unwanted groping and finally saying those comments you've been keeping to yourself for a reason, it's a good time. We do that here in Japan too. Last weekend, we all piled onto buses to go to a ryokan on the Noto peninsula. This is a hotel that features an onsen, or hot bath. Like some companies in the US, we went to a huge banquet hall in a hotel and consumed liquor courtesy of our bosses, but there the similarities ended.

This was an overnight trip. Here, everyone was separated by sex. Males stayed in hotel rooms with other males, and females with females, 3 - 6 people per room. Upon arrival, many people went out to the onsen and changed into their yukata, or cotton kimono. I was staying in a room with Katya and two other teachers who didn't speak much English. Katya and I both changed into our yukata for dinner. Putting the yukata on correctly is very important. If you wrap it one way, it's for summer/onsen wear, but if you wrap it the other way, it's for funerals. You then tie a sash around it, and there's a jacket that matches the sash you can wear over it. They give you tabi socks to wear with the rubber sandals you wear in the hallways of the hotel. Katya and I put on our yukata and went into the onsen before dinner, as did most other people.

For dinner, Lee and I, being the newest staff members, opened dinner with the toast. There were at least ten or twenty other new staff members this year, but apparently as the newest (and there being two of us togther) we got the job. It was just a simple "Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Kam-Pai (Cheers in Japanese)!" but it was on the stage in front of hundreds of people, both of us wearing our yukatas. No picture, as I was nervous about the toast since we didn't get too much information about it and I forgot to give Katya the camera when I went up. Oh well. When we first got up, the hotel staff person wearing a tux and holding the tray with the plum wine for us to toast with had only one. Normally, there's only one person giving a toast. Someone else brought a second, which was good. We didn't think both trying to drink from the same thimble would have been appropriate.

After the toast we headed back to our respective low tables, me at a female table and Lee at a male. Beer, sake, and wine were poured (every table had two servers, one for food and one for bringing drinks from the open bar), and we began eating. There was sea cucumber, crab (nicely cut open like before), some sort of mussel, crayfish both cooked and raw, a steak, some seafood nabe (generic Japanese word for stew), a yogurt fruit salad, two types of soup (if I remember correctly), raw fish, and a bunch of other dishes. There were also cakes for dessert. Lee would like to note that as there was an empty spot at his table, he got to take the best parts of two dinners. Also, that he will not be partaking of sea cucumber again.

After dinner, we left the tables and milled around in the big hall talking and enjoying the cake and open bar. It was getting pretty late so Lee went to bed but I opted to go with the group that went out for karaoke. We sang for three hours and then headed back for one last trip into the onsen before bed. In the morning, there was another dunk into the onsen, a buffet breakfast and then a bus ride home. For more pictures, see our Flickr page.

Lee's Note: Despite going to bed earlier I was almost as useless as Ana the next day because there may have been some serious snoring going on in the hotel room I was sharing. We both certainly got less than four hours of real sleep. A good breakfast from the large buffet (thankfully Western food was available - not into the pickled fish and whatnot for breakfast) and another visit to the onsen helped some.