J3J Episode 15: Angry Demon Beans Last Thursday was February 1st, marking off a few virtual turnpoints -- I have now spend one year in total in Japan (plus 2 if you count my childhood years, which I usually don't since I can't remember a thing), and the Japanese winter is now officially over. I was also going to include the end of an era since Don Quijote changed its plastic bags from blazing yellow to boring old white, but fortunately they had a change of mind and now they're the same as ever. Phew. At any rate, the first Sunday in February marks Setsubun (濡坌), the traditional end of the Japanese winter, which the locals celebrate by throwing dried soy beans at Daddy wearing a red demon mask and shouting "絕反陸﹜汏反ま!" (Out with demons, in with luck!). But I was blissfully ignorant of such traditions, so along with a few friends from the Finnish Embassy -- one of whom would be celebrating her birthday shortly -- I booked an overnight stay in Kinugawa Onsen (絕變燠硃環), a town whose name literally translates as Angry-Demon-River Hot-Springs. Kinugawa is over two hours by train straight to the north, nestled in a mountain valley near Nikko, with the Kinugawa River itself snaking along the bottom of the steep ravine. End of winter or not, temperatures in Tokyo were still teetering around the zero mark, and weather forecasts were promising -10 C but sunny for Kinugawa. They were wrong on both counts: the temperature was barely below freezing and it was snowing when the train arrived. Kinugawa's official mascots are a pair of cuddly oni (demons) named "Kinu", red-skinned with blond hair, and "Kawa", blue-skinned with brown hair. Both have earrings, exactly one fang and a single stubby horn poking out from their heads... and, it being Setsubun and all, two guys in oni costumes were greeting incoming tourists at the station. --> http://jpatokal.iki.fi/photo/travel/Japan/Kanto/Kinugawa/ Not that there were many tourists, mind you. Granted, February is one of the quietest times of the Japanese tourist season, but it is still painfully obvious that Kinugawa is not exactly a boom town, and it hasn't been one for a long time either. Kinugawa lives on tourism alone, and all the massive multistory concrete hotels blighting the landscape seem to date from the 70s or earlier, with quite a few abandoned hulks left to the winter winds. A shame, really, since the little you can see of the valley itself looks spectacular even in mid-winter, the river is a fantastic shade of green and the rocky mountains around are downright Alpine. The remaining enterprises are engaged in a relentless price war (at least by Japanese standards) and we ended up scoring room & board at the Kinugawa Green Palace (http://www.kinugawa-gp.com) for Y7,800 a head, quite a discount on their current advertised winter Saturday price of Y11,800 and probably orders of magnitude below what it must once have cost. Throw in Y1320 x 2 for the trip from Tokyo and back, and it adds up to a downright cheap weekend getaway. (If you agree, you know you've been living in Japan too long.) Price aside, there is little to recommend the Green Palace for: it's just one of some 20-odd of its kind, ugly from the outside, mildly scruffy and decorated in slightly bad taste on the inside. Then again, neither is there much one can say against it, our 4-person group was rarely *not* outnumbered by the staff and any problems we had were more like mild annoyances, eg. a somewhat overenthusiastic heating system and having to pay the Y1000 porn movie fee if you wanted to play on the TV's built-in Nintendo. And the hotel did have what we came for in the first place: a heated outdoor bath in which you could loll about in spring water (beneficial for oversensitivity to cold, rheumatism and neuroses, claims the hotel booklet) and watch the snowflakes melt on the surface of the water. If you sat in just the right position you could look out over trees and a little temple gate towards the snowy mountains... cheerfully ignoring the jungle of concrete and rusty pipe behind you. A massive dinner and a buffet (or "viking", as they say in Japanese) breakfast were included, and what some of the food was missing in quality was more than made up for in sheer quantity. Formal Japanese dinners are rarely a small affair, but at one stage we counted no less than sixteen individual plates and bowls... per person! Sashimi, crab nabe stew, whole boiled shrimp, deep-fried tofu with mountain vegetables, the works... the only dish that elicited unanimous disapproval was a peculiar mushroom salad dressed in an unholy union of mayonnaise and sake. 3 hour-long onsen dips, 5.5L of beer, a bottle of champagne, a large assortment of snacks and a shiatsu session for our birthday girl later -- in other words, the next day -- we boarded a train back to Tokyo. The overall atmosphere in the train was lethargic. - Funny. Everybody seems so tired, although we didn't actually *do* anything for the whole time. - Yeah, but it's not a stressed-out-tired... - ...right, it's more like a good tired. - Yeah. - Anybody want more beer? Last and least, yet more weird product names: Snack of the Week: "Clam Jerky". The name is painfully descriptive of the scariest thing I've seen since Prughurt. A steal at Y599 for a small bag. Band of the Week: Two-way tie between "Funk the Monkeys" and "Hide with Spread Beaver". Note that "Hide" should be pronounced 'hee-deh' and is short for Hideyoshi, but when spelled in romaji the name acquires a few interesting connotations. Currently brewing: some plans to spend a week in Okinawa in late April... Cheers,