EPT“Wait,” I asked myself, “where the hell is the shower?”
I found a wandering maid and asked her where I was supposed to bathe, pantomiming the process of soaping my chest for her benefit. She pointed at a sign near the stairs. “Men’s Shower B2,” it read.
“Oh,” I said, kicking myself mentally as I bowed to her. “Thank you very much.”
I went downstairs and took a towel off of a nearby shelf when I reached the second basement floor. Then I turned the corner and saw 30 naked Japanese businessmen strolling around a large room. Some were dressing in front of their lockers, while others were regarding themselves in front of a row of mirrors. No one was making any attempt to conceal themselves. Not a single towel was around a single waist.
“When in Rome….” I shrugged, stripping down and making my way into the communal bath with a bar of soap and a washcloth in hand. To my right were six rows, each with five showers. Men were sitting on tiny wooden stools and scrubbing themselves thoroughly. To my left was an enormous pool of water with maybe six men soaking in it. I decided to forgo the bath in favor of getting out of there as quickly as possible, but the basic idea of the communal baths in Japan is: shower, then bathe. The bathwater is changed only daily; being clean when you step into it is essential.
I shouldered my backpack and wandered through the heart of the city to the Osaka Museum of History. The museum was well-run with a friendly staff, but when you can only read the most basic description of a particular artifact, some of the appreciation is lost on you. For every giant block of kanji, there was maybe a single sentence of English. Still, most of the items on display looked really cool, and I tried my best to appreciate them. I wandered around the museum for an hour and a half before turning my attention towards my stomach.
The museum.
I’m pretty sure these plates are 500 years old, but I might be remembering incorrectly.
This was common.
There was a small snack shop a few hundred yards from the museum. Normally I try to avoid tourist-oriented establishments, but I hadn’t eaten breakfast. I was famished.
It’s worth noting that, during my two and a half weeks in Japan, I ate many, many bowls of noodles. The noodles at this snack shop were without a doubt the worst I had. Even still, I’d rate them “pretty good.” They weren’t inedible, they weren’t unhealthy, and they only cost $4. It was a nice change from the $4 lunch options of the United States.
Anyway, I made my way to Osaka-jo, the local castle. The castle was originally completed in 1583, only to be destroyed in 1615, rebuilt again by 1625, and destroyed again in 1868. Despite being a reconstruction, it was spectacular. The heat and humidity, however, were unspectacular. I treated myself to some ice cream on the way to the train station.
The castle grounds.
Osaka-jo itself. A Chinese man offered to take this picture for me while the two girls with him giggled off to the side.
Osaka is usually called an unattractive city, but that wasn’t my experience with it.
I enjoyed the ride to Okayama. Osaka had been too large of a city for me to wrap my head around, and everyone I had spoken to about Okayama had used to word “rural” to describe it. As I watched the countryside whiz by outside the window of the bullet train, I knew I had made the right decision. Osaka had been nice, but I wanted something more real, something more down to earth. Then I noticed that Okayama had a population of 630,000.
“Rural,” I thought. “Yeah.”
