7.30am. we ate breakfast, not served until 7.30 sharp. The Japanese pride themselves on their punctuality. I eat a bacon and cheese baguette, or some such thing. Sam eats mushroom rise, with miso soup and yogurt. Sam picks up my roll and takes two large bites. I’m like a bulldog when it comes to my food, can be food aggressive.
The guy running the café bar makes me coffee. He has adorable prominent rabbit teeth, so I call him Bucky. He is nice, they are all nice.
9am. Then we are off to the monkey park to see the snow monkeys. Get up there early, is always a good strategy with popular tourist attractions, as far as I am concerned. One of the nice girls from out hotel drives us. She shows us what bus stops at which to catch the bus on the way back. She gives us a map to show us where to get off the bus.
“The bus goes to the train station, don’t go there or you will have a long walk back to the hotel,” she says.
There is a wide, if soggy path up the hill to the Monkey Park. It is nice to get out into the quiet and solitude of nature. The air is crisp and clean, if not as cold as our drive suggested it may be.
Sam says he is a bit short of breath. I tell him that I am too. He says he was glad it wasn’t just him.
Then, suddenly, there is a monkey in the trees. Then another monkey. Then there is a monkey walking passed us on the path. We stop and watch them.
We head up to the park. There are plenty of monkeys to observe and photograph. There are plenty of tourists doing just that. It wasn’t cold enough for the snow monkeys to get into the hot springs, but they sat all around them. You could see the grain that had been put out to ensure there were snow monkeys for the tourists to see. They just walked amongst the people. Don’t pat them, don’t scare them and above all don’t feed them or let them see you have food. If the snow monkeys associate humans with food it will become impossible for us to observe them up close and personal without them pestering us for food.
We take photos. We stand and watch them.
11.11am. We walk back down from the monkey park, we just missed the bus by ten minutes. The next bus was at 12.06pm.
We pissed around taking blossom shots, waiting for the sun to come out from behind the clouds. But, I was hungry, my bacon roll had worn off and Sam ate half of it anyway, and that was at 7am and all. My stomach was telling me to eat. So, we walked back up the hill to Enza Café and ate Ramen. I put my jacket on the back of the chair.
“Don’t let me forget my jacket,” I said.
11.50am. We head back down to the bus stop. People had gathered by then waiting for the next bus. We took more sun on the blossom shots, as we waited.
12.04pm. “Where is your jacket?” Sam says.
“Oh shit,” I say. “I told you not to let me forget it.”
“The bus will probably be late,” says Sam.
“Not in Japan,” I say.
There is always time to get it done, I thought. No use standing and wondering if I have time to go and get it, just go. So, I ran back up the hill, literally ran. I couldn’t run all the way, it was a steep hill. I walked a bit and then ran again. I got my jacket and ran back down the hill. The bus was there by then and people were getting. We got on.
I heaved and gasped for breath. Oh universe, how fit am I. It was a steep hill, I want to add at this point. And it was up hill for half a kilometre, okay a quarter, but it wasn’t just a couple of steps.
When we were back in the hotel’s café, I couldn’t stop coughing from the run. It felt like a hay fever cough, bought on by the running, well, I guess it is spring here after all.
We sat in the café with our computers. I drank coffee.
We decided on a midday onsen, so we change into the traditional dress and clack up the street in our wooden shoes. It wasn’t nearly as glam as last nights, just a rusty old bath set into the ground, essentially. The public onsen. We went to three of them, they are all the same.
It was bloody hot too. Scolding hot, even after we put loads of water into it, it was still hot. We sat on the edge and bucketed water over ourselves. Eventually, we managed to slide our bodies under the water.
3pm. We are back in the hotel having a snooze. It’s always nice to have an afternoon snooze. But, the sun is shining. We’re inside on our beds and the sun is finally shining.
4pm. We head outside for a walk around. We climb up behind the houses to all the temples. There are some really ornate temples but none of them seem to have been well maintained, and are in varying states of decay, can’t really see why. May be the old inhabitants that built them have long since died. And like country towns the world over, the young ‘uns had moved away. Don’t know. Just guessing.
6.15pm. We go to the big, luxo onsen. It was hot, we were ready to leave much sooner than last night. It just seemed so hot. Maybe it was because we’d already had one. There were some cute boys there to purve on, well, appreciate, maybe a better term. Glance at, really. Hot dads seemed to be the specialty of the night. Strapping men with their boys having onsen together
We ate in. Croquettes, roast chicken and a fried chicken entrée for dinner back in the hotel.
We packed. We got ready to leave for tomorrow. Ready to get back on the tourist conveyor belt.
We went to sleep at 10pm, Nan (Sam’s one for early to bed, so I refer to him as Nan) was very happy about that.
Don’t pat the snow monkeys.
Oh, Jesus the water is hot in this tub!
People come and people go.
Let’s see all the naked men,
In their natural surroundings.
Let’s go to bed early,
So, we can get up early.
There is the sound of wooden shoes
Clacking in the street.
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