Naruko Onsen

Naruko Onsen, home to geta, public baths and Kokeshi dolls, is a small train ride from where I live. I took the journey to this hot spring town a few weekends back, with every intention of creating a wonderful photo account of my trip there, spending the day exploring every nook and cranny, and then soaking the sulphur infused water that tresses up from under the ground in the numerous bath houses above.

Unfortunately my camera hasn’t arrived from England, the weather wasn’t perfect and the trains run so infrequently that i’m going to have to give you a slightly condensed glossed over version. Still, I hope you enjoy!

I love hot springs. Both times that I have lived in Japan, there has been some famous hot spring location near me. Before it was Arima Onsen, now it is Naruko Onsen. This was one of the few places that I wanted to visit before I came to Japan, so now that i’m all settled in I took the plunge and paid the overpriced JR train fair to get there.

After waiting nearly two hours at Furukawa station for a train (told you they were infrequent!), I boarded the train and made my way to Naruko. The journey took about half an hour from Furukawa stopping off at about 8 stations before arriving at Naruko Onsen. There were various billboards reminding people of the Date Masamune fesitval in Iwadeyama posted at a few stations. I’ll blog about my experiences there later.

Naruko station is smaller than I imagined, but knowing how many trains pass through I can see why it doesn’t need to be big. Walking out of the station takes you to an array of taxi’s waiting to take you to your next destination. Turn around, and directly outside the station are a mirage of plaques (which are incidentally hotel advertisments!) and two foot spa pools for the weary traveller to soak their feet in and rest.

Situated on the mountainside and on top of an (active!) volcano, Naruko boasts a great location to build Japanese onsen (spas or baths) upon. Looking up from below, you can see the many vents that let heat and steam rise out from the mountainside below. It’s a sight to behold (although nothing compared the the geysers at Yellowstone National Park in America I feel).

Naruko is home to a woodwork native to the Tohoku region called ‘Kokeshi’. These Kokeshi dolls, long cylindrical dolls with large round heads, are supposedly meant to have originated from Naruko, although the debate rages on in Japan about where they actually came from. However, it is clear that Naruko has a strong relationship with these dolls. For starters, they are everywhere. Ornaments, souvenirs, parts of the village, shops, stalls and signs all bear the image of Kokeshi. Over 80 people still take on jobs as full time Kokeshi doll ‘craftsmen’. There are shops where you can see the dolls being made, have a doll made personally for you or even decorate your own!

As I said, they are everywhere! Unfortunately I missed the festival that happened not too long ago, but I’m not really interested in the dolls themselves. The hustle and bustle of the matsuri (festival) is what i’m after.

The big draw to Naruko however, is the baths. As I said, Naruko is situated on an active volcano, and the minerals and such in the ground mix with water flowing to and from the gorge, to rivers and streams far, far below. The end result is a soft sulphur infused water, which makes great bath water. It is supposed to ‘heal’ certain ailments, but as to the accuracy of that, I am not privy.

I took a long walk down one side of Naruko. The public baths are up in the center of Naruko, and there are hotels everywhere. Taking a walk down towards the police station, about a kilometre or two, you find some annexes to some of the hotels. Extra bath-houses, or just bath houses where they didn’t have enough space to build the hotel as well, are in this area. Often refered to as 日帰り onsen (day return baths), these offer bathing without having to book a hotel room. The two or so public baths Naruko have (Taki no yu for example), are often busy and crowded.

Luckly for me, I came to the bath just as the sole person inside it was leaving. So I had the whole bath to myself. As is usual with most bath houses, there is a mens only bath, and a womens only bath. Some places have family baths, and a few have mixed baths. They are usually indoors, although with some fancy hotels you’ll find outside (or partial outside baths, such as Mori no yu, which are great when there is settling snow outside and the air is chilly!). The symbol on the curtain is ゆ, ‘yu’, which basically means ‘hot water’. The other symbol is 男, ‘otoko’, which means ‘male’.

The bath houses usual have a small single changing room where everyone gets naked and gets into the bath. No shyness in Japan! Haha. There are baskets for your belongings (no lockers for the security concious here unfortunately, but then it’s a good thing Japan is one of the safest countries around isn’t it!) and line of vanity-style mirrors to do your hair and shave or reapply make-up or whatever.

The bath itself was rather small. Sometimes they provide small (and I mean small) towels that you can use to cover up your, erm, “Kokeshi doll”, but here they had none. Sometimes bath-houses or hotels provide more than one bath, usually with different waters or different temperatures. The decor can range from the rustic to the plain, to real rock or imitation. It really depends on the hotel or bath-house, rather than the location.

Washing, as many of you know, is done outside with showers before you enter the bath. This keeps the bath clean for the bathers, rather than having to sit in your own filth or kill everything with a tonne of chlorine.

This bath-house had an impressive collection of Kokeshi dolls, as do most of the establishments in Naruko. They really seem to pride themselves on this image, so you see hundreds of them lined up everywhere.

Outside in various locations you can ‘try’ the water. However, I wouldn’t imagine you could drink it, so the only thing to do would be to wash your hands with it. Nice touch though.

People walk about from their hotels in the evening wearing yutaka (like a light summer dressing-gown) and geta (traditional wooden sandals). With the ambient lighting, it makes walking round the village during an evening a very pleasant experience. Unfortunately the village is pretty small, so there isn’t much to walk around, but it’s a nice image none-the-less.

Some decent artwork upon the wall of, I assume, an izakaya (pub) of some sort.

Take a walk down the opposite way of the police station, and you’ll find the Kokeshi doll museum, which hosts hundreds of the little buggers. Seeing how much those things cost, (about £10 for the little ones and up to £100-£300 for the bigger ones), that museum must have a small mint inside. Outside are two massive Kokeshi dolls, about 20-25ft tall. Walk a little further and you come to Naruko gorge.

Unfortunately the gorge was very dissapointing. I was expecting some lush greenery and nature upon the hills, with a walkway going over the gorge. However, the bridge is big and ugly, and the view is small and pretty diminishing. Unfortunate, but I got a walk out of it. I wish I had eaten something before I came, because I hadn’t eaten anything since a single onigiri (riceball) for breakfast!

Walking back to town, I took a walk up the main part of Naruko where all the hotels are located. Certainly the busiest place, albeit not that busy this night. I brought some omiyage (souvenir presents for people back home) and a small crafted wooden doll (not Kokeshi!), located the big local bath-house Taki no yu and found the onsen shrine.

I took a stroll up the steps to the shrine, passing a torii gate made of stone. You can see the limitations of my hand-held camera; it wasn’t dark outside, just low evening light. Every other shot came out blurred. Since I hadn’t eaten for most of the day, and by that time I had walked about 10km, I decided to say ’sod it!’ and skipped the rest of the shrine (gives me something to de next time!).

I went for some dinner at a small restaurant. I am really surprised at the lack of public restaurants around here. I suppose most of the hotels do their own food. Part of the experience I suppose.

On the way back to the station, I found the foot baths empty, so I pulled up my trousers, pulled my shoes and socks off and had a quick soak. Ooooooooo, that felt good. If you do anything in Naruko, do that! Haha.

I had a short chat with a young girl who stopped off at the bath, but unfortunately I had to catch the train to get back so our conversation was cut short. First time I’d talked to a random stranger since I got here. Need more practice!

Anyhow, it was a short quiet trip back to Furukawa. I got back to my apartment far more worn out than I thought I would be. “Man, I need a bath after today’s excursion!” I thought.

Oh….wait…