I stared straight through a stream of cigarette smoke as Jean Baptiste, Ninon and Yoko argued about the next course of action. We spent about 20 minutes in that god-forsaken train station which reminds of a western set straight out of “The Good, the Bad and The Ugly”. They were jabbering on in French and I totally tuned out and just let the tension drain away from me. I was really glad to see Ninon, all tanned and gorgeous-looking in her gauzy maxi dress. Somehow, I got used to seeing her in spaghetti straps and hole-y pants that the sight of her all dolled-up in the Japanese country-side was pleasantly unnerving.
Finally, they clapped their hands and said, “Ok, let’s go!” And I was like, oh, yeah!
We crammed into the mini and started driving. What ensued was a conversation worthy of a nose-bleed. Jean Baptiste and Ninon speak English, French and Japanese, so I had no problem with them, Yoko could speak Japanese and French, Sophie could speak French and English and I could speak English and Japanese (and Tagalog of course), so it seemed, no matter which language we used, there is bound to be somebody left out of the loop (Except for Ninon and JB, lucky bastards). We started throwing ice-breakers at each other which didn’t really fly on account of all conversation had to be killed to address the fact that we were utterly lost and night was catching up on us fast.
Our goal was to find an onsen (hot spring resort) where we could bathe as everyone felt like filth (well, JB and Yoko just got down from climbing some bloody mountain, and they didn’t feel their freshest). We kept driving and Yoko kept calling people on the phone asking where the hell we can find this, where we can find that, until we found ourselves driving by a winding stream of water that was blowing steam into the wind.
We came up with different interpretations. JB swore it was hot-spring water flowing, so that means the onsen was nearby. Ninon said there was no bloody way. Yoko couldn’t quite make up her mind. Sophie was inclined to agree with JB. I told them they were all bloody idiots, that was obviously the fog effect for when the fairies come out to play in the stream.
Before we could come to an agreement, we miraculously found ourselves outside the door of the ryokan (inn) where JB and Yoko were supposed to check in for the night. JB, Ninon and Yoko talked to the innkeeper to convince her to let us all use the ofuro (bath house) while Sophie and I munched on Pokkis. The nice innkeeper agreed and we all bounded into the bath house like little children with Ninon yelling “Pour aux douche!”
After the shower, we all went to a nearby restaurant for a dinner of ramen and stir-fried vegetables since Sophie was almost a vegetarian (how anybody can almost be a vegetarian, I’ll never know). The entire dinner conversation revolved around sex.
Seriously, JB considers himself THE authority for all things sex since he’s 1. French, 2. Male, 3. Living in Japan and 4. A French male living in Japan. I bet Yoko was thanking her lucky stars that she couldn’t understand English a whole lot, since I don’t really think listening to her boyfriend talk about his sexual encounters in front of her was her idea of a riveting conversation. I could barely swallow down food for the kind of ridiculous and impossibly funny crap pouring out of JB’s mouth. I was pretty sure I was bound for indigestion but it was worth it. Somewhere between JB swearing that Japanese boys are every virgin girl’s dream and Ninon rolling on the floor laughing, the restaurant lady informed us that it was almost JB and Yoko’s inn’s curfew and we’d better go back. So the bill was paid and we went back to the inn, left Yoko and JB there with hugs, kisses, good nights and good byes and then drove off in search of some place to set camp.
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| From Apr 23, 2011 |
Yoko, JB, Ninon and Me having dinner, Photographer: Sophie
The three of us apparently had our own reasons for being as thrifty as possible. Sophie missed her flight from Paris to Tokyo and the bloody ticket she bought from ANA was non-refundable and non-rebookable, so she had to buy a new one. The money she had saved for when she arrived in Japan was then used to purchase the new ticket, so she had to cut back on the major expenses (read: accommodations), y’all know about my plight, and Ninon was just going along with whatever Sophie and I needed to do.
So, we drove in the night, it was almost 11 pm by this time, we saw signs leading to a camping site and within minutes, we were there. Sophie brought her tent and 3 sleeping bags from France for this trip and we all went into the camping ground to set up our casa.
The camping ground was pretty decent, there were several trees and strings of light bulbs strung over the branches and several people had their camps set up already. The tents there were huge, they looked like they came straight out of the Quidditch World Cup camping ground. They could fit a whole table and some chairs inside with a net enclosure and a separate area zipped around with opaque vinyl for the bedroom. I was thoroughly impressed.
I expected us to build our tent under the lights but Ninon and Sophie had other ideas, they wanted to move deeper into the camping ground, into the darkness, almost into the woods. I had no idea why they wanted to be that isolated, but I didn’t want to argue (besides, I’m new to camping, what did I know about ideal camping spots?). Thus, we assembled our tent on a patch of land with moist grass up to my ankles and prepared to sleep. Unfortunately, the tent was quite small, with the zipped-up door as the only opening, we had to close the net over the door so the mosquitoes won’t come in, but this made the tent unbearably hot. I was sweating in minutes and I couldn’t sleep.
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| From Apr 23, 2011 |
Our tent in the light of day
Finally, I took my sleeping bag and told them I would just sleep outside. I figured it wasn’t such a big deal, the thought was kind of romantic, actually, sleeping right under the stars. But in reality, there was nothing romantic about it at all! If I lay to my right, I find myself staring into the woods, peering into tall blades of grass and thinking “Wild Animals”. If I stare straight up into the sky, I end up looking at the gnarled branches of the trees, hear the sounds of birds scuffing and flapping their wings and I think “Bird Poop”. If I lay to my other side, I end up looking at the tent again and I think “Heat.”
It was a dilemma of colossal proportions and I turned over and over until finally Ninon called out from inside the tent “Di! Do you want me to sleep over there with you?”
And I was like “Yeahh!!! Okkaasaaannn!!!(Mommy)”
Ninon went out and set her sleeping bag next to mine, leaving a sleeping Sophie inside the tent. We were pretty much doing ok, until horror upon horrors, the mosquitoes came, in HORDES! They started biting and we started slapping ourselves until sleep was starting to look like an impossibility. I finally threw in the towel and turned to Ninon.
“Ninon, I think we should sleep inside the tent.”
“Di! You are a pain in the ass!” Ninon roared.
We crammed ourselves in the tent and slept as well as we could.
The next day, I woke up fairly early, feeling sticky as a melted lolly and I wasn’t really cheery. All I wanted was a bleeding shower and my irritated movements woke Ninon up. We went out of the tent to roam the surrounding areas of the camping ground and we found a nice stretch of beach right next to where we parked the car. It was too dark the night before and we didn’t see the beach when we arrived. It was like an oasis! We went back to the tent, woke Sophie up, slapped on our swimsuits and ran into the ocean like mad women.
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| From Apr 23, 2011 |
Sophie in the Oasis
After a couple of minutes, we were sufficiently refreshed and we were ready to start our day. We got out of the water and went in search for the shower room in the camping ground. As it turns out, the shower room was closed. We had no choice but to go to a gazebo in the middle of the camping ground, where a huge round sink with about 10 faucet heads sticking out in a circle, provided fresh, cold water to campers. The sink was obviously meant for washing the face and hands, food, utensils and to refill water bottles. It was definitely not meant for washing the hair or the body. The sink and the faucets were a good 3 feet above the floor, but we were desperate to wash the salt and sand off us, so Sophie and I climbed over the sink and started washing our bodies with the ice-cold water. Ninon was smarter, she filled water bottles up with water and poured it over herself as she showered away.
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| From Apr 23, 2011 |
Shower on the Sink
Japanese campers stood in front of the other faucet heads, brushing their teeth and staring at us in disbelief. I turned my ridiculously long hair over the sink and actually shampooed it. I didn’t care about the gaping Japanese, I wasn’t about to go through the whole day with dirty hair. I finished my “shower” with this Japanese teenage boy washing a big watermelon under a faucet head beside mine, surreptitiously glancing at me, then shifting his eyes around like he was looking for a hidden camera or something that can remotely explain the unthinkable thing happening in front of his eyes.
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| From Apr 23, 2011 |
Before I started washing my hair
After washing up, changing, folding up our tent and throwing all our stuff at the back of the mini (and laying out our delicates under the glass at the back of the car to dry), we drove off to the nearest Family Mart to get breakfast and drove off to the supermarket to buy supplies for our hike for the day (we waited about 20 minutes for it to open, we were THAT early). With all the stuff done and out of the way, we started driving to the base of our hike spot; one of Japan’s 100 Most Famous Mountains: Mt. Chokai.
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| From Apr 23, 2011 |
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