Entries this day: Awake Chewing Onsen ZzzDream

Awake

9:06am JST Sunday 27 November 2005

Hitomi and I just got up for breakfast at 7:59am, a time chosen because her phone alarm announces the time, and we wanted to get as many syllables as possible: "¤·¤Á¤¸¤´¤¸¤å¤­¤å¤Õ¤ó¤Ç¤¹¡£" instead of just "¤Ï¤Á¤¸¤Ç¤¹¡£" 1 minute later.

I guess we should have gone for "¤·¤Á¤¸¤´¤¸¤å¤Ê¤Ê¤Õ¤ó¤Ç¤¹¡£" 7:57am, which written has the same number of characters, but is actually one more syllable, and a good example of the two Japanese pronunciations of 7.

Chewing

8:53am JST Sunday 27 November 2005

I like chewing food. It gives me a moment to be mindful of those who worked (coherently and independently) to harvest, grind, mix, bake, serve the food, plus all the transportation in between and the design somewhere in the process. I like that Gyosei complimented my chewing instead of saying something like, "man, you take forever to eat," or some variant, which seems to characterize most of the responses to my chewfulness.

Onsen

10:39am JST Sunday 27 November 2005

Have just arrived at Yutopia, an onsen in Hakone that I visited with Yuuko back in the day. Paired escalators were moving forward on the right (thought in Japan traffic circulates on the left) and I commented that it seemed curious.

Hitomi seemed surprised, too; in her case, that traffic in Japan circulates on the left.

There's a monstrous line; I'm glad I've been here before when it wasn't so crowded. I'm glad we're saving the monkey net for tomorrow, when it should hopefully be less crowded all around.

8:59pm JST Sunday 27 November 2005

Big time fun overall today. Yutopia/Yunesan was definitely more crowded than the last time I was there, but we still pretty much got to do everything we wanted. The most crowded item (per space available) was the hot flat rocks for sleeping; but even that became available for us after a few checks.

I slept on the rock for about an hour starting then.

I returned most often to the dead sea pool, which I must say was not as buoyant as the real Dead Sea, yet stung cuts more than the real Dead Sea. Hmmmmm. Hitomi and I agreed on both of these points and decided it's simply because the real Dead Sea is natural.

A couple of places were changed from when Yuuko and I went. The outdoor onsens of Yutopia were themed as different beverages. Coffee, wine, green tea, sake. They used to have smaller pools with these themes, but no decanters pouring the beverage into the pool. Cute to see two little kids in the huge Japanese green tea cup.

Also cute was the kid with little leaves on his face to give him a Groucho Marx look. The kid and his mom wanted to do some similar leaf art on his dad, who suggested they play rock-scissors-paper to see just who would decorate whom. The dad played scissors against two rocks.

Outside there are three water slides, and the three sliders at a time are synchronized, "¤Ï¤¤¤É¤¾" when they can go. It was my turn to go, so I put on swim goggles (similar to what hundreds of people had in the various pools, etc) and the guy came up to me and asked me to take them off. "Please take off goggles and wrap around the wrist."

I took them off and was all, "what if I lose a contact? Are you going to buy new ones?"

But the complaint in English went over his head, "contacto?"

I switched to Japanese as best I could, "¤â¤·¡¢»ä¤Î¥³¥ó¥¿¥¯¥È¤Ï¥Ð¥¤¥Ð¥¤¤·¤Ã¤¿¤é¡¢¤É¤¦¤¹¤ë¡©" and he was sorta looking to his radio for backup, and I just went "fuck off" and slid down, purposely flipping forward onto my stomach to almost certainly break a rule he had not cited for me. I found it trivially easy and then flipped to crouch surfing on both feet and soon splooshed into the pool, never getting my head wet. All this in about a 20 meter gentle S curve slide.

I considered going back up so I could try surfing all the way down, but I didn't, after I recognized it would have been out of anger at this guy more than trying to do something fun.

We sat in the main pool for a while, getting a sorta massage with the water jets in a seat-shaped curve in the pool. It made my skin itch after a while; I wonder why it should do that; they seem unrelated. We giggled as the spray during the fake rainstorm came hugely arcing over the pool and landed *just* in front of us. Almost like it was designed to not splash the relaxation seats.

Chowed lunch at one point and big ice cream cone thing. Was unable to get a sample of the other ice cream, but they at least had a specific description of the flavors behind the name Blue _(something)_. Grapefruit and lemon. Oooh; not getting that one.

We enjoyed basically every body of water in the place, except for the one under the gold dome; it was always crowded, and I couldn't figure out why. Oh, that one and the sake one. .... Hmmm; I think the sake one was specifically a hot hot water pool last time. Maybe it still is, and that's why it was so crowded.

ZzzDream

11:00pm JST Sunday 27 November 2005

A bit of trouble going to sleep tonight, but I dreamt

My friends and I were alongside the Panama Canal, and the Israeli soldiers were blocking our passage and had cut some of the mule (train locomotive) tracks so we couldn't ride them. They had one train working, but had reconfigured it so it was laying on its side, using one side (previously the top) for attack and the other side (previously the bottom) for defense. They rolled by and I was afraid they might attack us (though the bottom was facing our direction), but they just went by.

I drove our mule, but it went off the end of the tracks and I had no way of steering it. Tried to get back on, but couldn't and then there was a soldier with a gun at the end of the lock, and he saw us, but didn't know who we were and didn't try to stop us; we were in a mule, so he thought were were on his team.

Rolled by and up a hill into some traffic and stopped.