Email Message #183
Amanohashidate Layover day, Date: October 8, 2000
Title: Making Lemonade when I Am Given Lemons.
Patience and flexibility continues! We are staying in a campground that doesn't invite one to stay around. How does one make "lemonade when you are served lemons?" Judy and I decided to rent bicycles. We checked out the prices in several places. The cost was the same...200 yen per hour. (107 yen equals $1.00, but we just round it down to 100 yen.) But we found a place that would rent the bicycle for 1 day for 400 yen! We got them around 9am and had to return them by 6pm. What a deal!
Now these bicycles are the same kind that we saw in the Netherlands and other parts of Europe. I call them the "Pedestrian bicycles" because they are used by people as a form of transportation, not for sport. They are the kind where the handle bars are tall and that makes you sit up tall and straight.
Judy and I rode the bicycles across the spit to the other side of Miyazu Bay where I had three choices of getting to the viewing spot of Amanohashidate on the side of the mountain. Judy and I walked up more than 600 steps to the viewing spot. Other people could chose to take lift chairs or a reticular train. It is part of Japanese tradition to stand with your back towards Amanohashidate, bend at the waist to look between your legs at the spit. If you look at it just the right way it seems as if that spit looks like it is headed right into the sky towards heaven. I didn't stay upside down long enough to see this effect. I stayed down long enough to get my picture taken and to take a picture.
After walking back down the mountain, Judy and I continued to ride our bicycles around the shores of Miyazu Bay. Sometimes it was on the main road around the bay, other times it was on a developed walking and bicycling path right on the shore of the bay.
We also rode though the narrow streets of the neighborhoods. That was fun because we saw the gardens the families planted behind their homes. Some open land was also growing rice. There were several places that were developed into very nice tourist stops where visitors could buy the marine products of this area...mainly many different types of dried fish. The combination of forested mountains next to a bay made a wonderful habitat for birds. I saw many waterbirds... especially herons and egrets, and a type bird of prey (perhaps a kite as identified by a birder on the tour). They were flying the thermals above the sides of the mountains. Once there were three of them flying together calling to each other. These same birds flew over the bay. One of them perched on a very tall tower of a cement factory near the water. Another time a whole flock of herons flew up together into the sky to fly in circles. I tried to capture some of these birds on film. I'll see later if the pictures turn out.
Judy and I also enjoyed bicycling into the neighborhoods taking pictures of the gardens and the houses and the people. How did we continue to make "lemonade out of our lemons?" Judy and I had heard of other riders going to traditional Japanese baths in Kyoto. I remembered my great experiences 28 years ago. So we decided to find a public bath to take our baths there instead of at camp in the makeshift showers there. A lot of other Odyssey riders had also heard about the public baths in Amanohashidate, hence we had a bathful of friends.
First we entered the reception of the hotel and took our street shoes off to put on house slippers. We each paid 800 Yen for out bath. The baths were segregated for the men and women. We walked down a softy carpeted hallway to a sliding door that opened into the foyer of the changing room for the bath. The left side of the room had cubbies with baskets in them where we put our clothes. The other side of the room had a 8ft counter with three sinks and one large mirror where we could cash out teeth and dry our hair. Towels and washcloths were available next to the sliding door that led into the bathing room. Just to the left of the door were two shower stalls. Then the left side of the room was lined with six bathing stations.
Each station had a little wooden stool for the bather to sit on in front if the water faucet that had controls on it so the water could come out of the faucet into a small bamboo bucket or through a shower head on a hose. Each station had a mirror for the bather to look into as she bathed. Body soap, shampoo and hair conditioner were all provided at the bathing stations. The floor of the bathing room was smooth brown concrete. The right side of the room was taken up with a large bath that was at least eleven feet long, two feet deep and five feet wide. There was a sitting shelf along the side of the bath so a bather could have their legs and bottom in the hot water, but not their torso. I choose to sit on the bottom of the bath and stretch out my legs. The water came up to my shoulders.
This bath had a large picture window that looked out into a garden and another outdoor soaking bath. It is customary to clean your self at the the bathing station before soaking in the tubs. Most of the Odyssey women chose to go to the outside bath to sit and soak in the hot water. The water felt very soft and had a pleasurable smell to it. We concluded that bathing salts were put into the water. It was such a pleasure to soak in hot water after cleaning myself. I quite like the traditional Japanese bathing custom.
When I had soaked long enough in the hot bath, I went to the showers to take an increasingly cool to cold shower to cool down from the bath. I dried myself off and then slathered lotion all over myself in the changing room. Our bathing lasted for a luxurious 60 minutes.
Judy, and I and several other riders sat out in the lobby for the next 1-1/2 hours cooling down, drinking water, chatting about our experiences and writing our journals. Judy and I were the last to leave at 10 pm. We had no where else to go but back to camp and out tents. Judy and I were quite happy with ourselves and our day's experiences. We did an great job of making a memorable day from the terrible beginnings of our bare bones, primitive campground.