Day 2 - Nozawaonsen - Sneak Peak into an Onsen!

Brellowgirl
Nov 5, 2015
3 min read

Day 2 @ Nozawaonsen

There are more work away volunteers that have showed up in the past two days! A couple – the girl is from Australia and the guy from France and today another girl from France has come to stay for a few weeks. I am loving it here! I cooked dinner and I’m waiting for everyone else to get their food done so we can eat together. The kitchen is bustling and happy and smells good.

For work today we aired out the futons on the banisters from the lodge and some of the other girls did the same for the futons in the village house. I vacuumed the crap outta this place and dusted it clean. My 4 hours went by really fast. I was working with Rose, the girl from Melbourne and we got to talk about our past and upcoming trips. I thought my story was crazy until I started hearing everybody else’s. We got done around noon, I had leftovers and I went out for a walk to explore. I’ve only been going to one onsen for baths so I peeked my head into a few new ones that I passed on the way. Some of them are so stinky I don’t know if I could stand bathing in them. It must be the minerals in the water. Maybe sulfur? Ick. I walked around on my own for an hour soaking up the sun and familiarizing myself with a little bit of the town.

Around 3 I met up with Annie and Thomas, the Belgian couple to go for a hike. They’ve been here for over a week now so they pointed out some cool things on our way. We went through the main street of town down to the cooking onsen called Ogama. It’s boiling hot and the locals are allowed to bring their vegetables to boil in the onsen water. It is SO cool to see. When we walked past there was a lady blanching some kind of green leafy vegetable. I’ve heard the locals also boil their eggs in the water. Down the street there’s an outdoor foot spa called Footbath Yurari. It’s a hot spring that only has room for like 2 or 3 people and there are wooden seats around it so you can sit there and stick your feet in. It’s so funny because it’s right at a small four way intersection in the road. We continued up the road and went through Tsutsujiyama Park where there are a thousand miniature Buddha statues that line a trail into the forest. We went along the trail and got to the top where we could see the village below and some great views of the mountains in the distance. On the way back to the lodge I stopped at the butchers and got some meat for chicken Marengo. Chopped up an onion and sautéed it with what I think was a bulb of garlic, then threw in the chicken, two kinds of tomatoes and left over mushrooms. Annie let me borrow some rice and I had dinner with the rest. I’ve had a huge headache all day so I’m trying to get over it and might go to bed early cause I can barely keep my eyes open my head is pounding so badly. This is headache two in two weeks and both times I was wearing my contacts. I think there might be a correlation.

I think I’m gonna hit the onsen soon so I don’t get lazy and not go. I was hoping for an empty onsen so I could relax in quiet but I doubt that will be the case. Enjoy the pics of the cooking onsen, that place is so cool.

Much love,

Cas