Naked People and Ninjas

Yesterday was the beginning of Silver Week, the five day weekend in September. I had a lesson with my Japanese tutor in Sapporo station, which I was fifteen minutes late for on account of missing my train and getting lost in the station. After the lesson I made my way back to Ainosato kyoikudai, where I was picked up by Kazunori. All I was told was that we were going to an onsen hotel. And this frightened me. I’ll get into that in a second. Anyway, I found out when we got home that we weren’t just visiting the onsen, but we were staying in the hotel overnight like a little vacation. So, I packed a little bag and off we went. It was a long drive to the hotel, in a town quite close to Niseko. And I was starting to feel a bit car sick (the continuous rap ‘love music‘ on the radio didn‘t help), so that I wished the car ride would just be over with. Even if that meant the onsen would be that much closer.


The hotel was huge, and very nice looking. All the greeters were dressed up in suits or kimonos. And there were a lot of greeters. We checked into the hotel and put our stuff in our room, which was a tatami-mat style place, and pretty neat. Then we went out to see the mini hot spring and some shops. On our way back, me and Sachiko were assaulted by about five young cats. They literally darted across the street right out in front of me and I almost stepped on one. We spent some time with the cats, who were very loving, and made sure they didn’t get hit by any cars. One cat in particular decided to follow us for a bit before opting to chill out by the hot spring.
We met Aya back in the hotel room. And I never did go to the onsen. Kazunori went, and then Sachiko and Aya went. The reason I didn’t go was because I didn’t know that was where they were going. Honest. They said they were going to the ‘bathrooms’. Not the onsen. Oh, maybe I should clue you in about what an onsen is. Basically, you take a hot spring, add a nude beach and then take away the beachiness. That’s an onsen.


Anyway, the food in the hotel was amazing. We went to the buffet restaurant for supper and breakfast. I’ve never seen so much food in a buffet in my life. You had to take two plates on a tray to fit it all. And then in the hotel room we watched this amazing Japanese sitcom that I couldn’t understand but seemed like the best thing ever.

Today we left the hotel and stopped at a couple places on our way home. The first was the volcano place, where we took some pictures and went to a store in which everything was made of glass. I think we spent an hour just looking at stuff in that store. It was all so amazingly neat. Then we went to Noboribetsu, which was basically an old-fashioned Japanese ninja village. Up until this point I had been using my keitai for taking pictures. Sadly, it died as soon as we went inside the ninja village. You have to imagine the tragedy of this. Luckily, Kazunori had a disposable camera so all was not lost. The ninja village was amazing. You didn’t see any ninjas until after the giant epically awesome ninja battle happened. It started out as a guy doing tricks with a bamboo mat thing, then some pushed into me. I looked to see who did it, intending and giving them a little glare, when to my surprise and delight I see a ninja. There were two of them at first, then a third one slid down on this wire thing. Then a fourth one came up, who seemed to be opposed to the other three. A three-on-one ninja battle ensued. It was lovely. Of course, the one guy won. I got pictures with them.

Then there was a little play that I saw. I was the only gaijin in the entire house. So when the guy was explaining the things the audience wasn’t allowed to do, he also did it in English, but talked directly to me, sitting in the front row. I swear every eye was on me. It was weird. And cool. This play had even better ninja fight scenes than the other one. When we left the little theatre thing, there were a lot more ninjas around. One was just chilling out, scaling the rooves of all the buildings and waving at people. How wonderful would it be to have a job like that? Get paid for being a ninja, just doing your ninja stuff?