Aside from visiting shrines, temples and castles, we batched a large portion of our exposure to traditional Japanese culture into a trip to Kinosaki. I had no idea where Kinosaki was, and after looking at a map, still don’t know how to explain it meaningfully. Suffice it to say, it’s a small resort town a couple of hours by train from Kyoto. There is one main street and the town seems to survive on tourism.

The tourism in the area stems from onsens which are hot spring baths sourced from the adjacent (volcanic) mountains. There are 7 of these public baths within the town, all within walking distance, plus some hotels such as ours may have private baths. The hotel we stayed at was a ryokan which was as close as we got to traditional Japanese living with sliding doors, tatami floors, and what not. This Japanese Inn had 3 private baths, and we tried out one so we had an idea of what to expect. Even after reading the English instructions and trying things out, we were a bit lost on the etiquette.

Oh well, there’s no better way to figure out than by trying right? So we wore our Yukatas and walked around town to visit the public baths (later, our Japanese friend mentioned that we didn’t need to walk around commando – oops). The hot springs were kind of what you would expect at a swimming pool, if everyone was naked and segregated by sex. Except the water was really hot – to a point that I would have to ease in part by part, and get out after awhile because I couldn’t handle the heat. I only went to one public bath, but Pauline went to several. I don’t really see the appeal, it’s nice to take a bath on a hot and humid day, but I would get all sweaty again walking back to the hotel!

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: japan, travelling