back in the countryside

It’s finally happened—i am having the Japanese experience of my dreams. After a hard day’s traveling, i find myself in my new hostel, “Aizu no Sato” (Aizu Town). The host is a friendly English-speaking man who was surprised to find a bearded Caucasian speaking Japanese at his doorstep, even though the name i gave him over the phone is obviously foreign-sounding, and our conversation was in Japanese. He related to me that his hostel did not receive many gaijin travelers, probably because this area is so out of the way. When i asked where the o-furo (Japanese bath) was, he told me that an onsen (bathhouse) is just down the road and that he could give me a hundred yen discount! Well, hot damn. To top things off, he opened the shoji screen door to my room and i discovered i’ll be staying in a 9-tatami room (quite sizable) all alone! With a television, and breakfast served at 7am! Furthermore, the room has cool pictures on the walls of hand-drawn maps of the area and a kid engaged in samurai sword technique. What more could i ask for? On to the onsen to clean my pores of everything under the sun.