Hoooooooot springs

Went to some hooooooot springs a day or two ago. I was expecting rocks and bubbly water and maybe some trees and kimonos. What it really was was like a water park. Kind of. It was an overcast day so there weren't too many people there. We only really went into the indoor area anyway, which was pretty much a big massage pool thing with a lot of water jets. Saunas too, which was nice. Outside there was a big wave pool but I think it was shut down because so few people were there. There were also some slides but they didn't interest me. It felt kind of weird because this was my first full day in Japan that wasn't spent in an airport or hotel. I'm pretty sure I stuck out like a sore thumb because there were no other foreigners there at all.

The actual hot springs were sort of like a spa-like thing. Everyone was naked in there, which was uh, a little weird. The springs were separated by gender though so no HOTT PIXX. You gotta wash before you get in the baths, so there are a bunch of stalls to do that in. Japanese showers are a bit different than the western world though. Instead of stand-up shower stalls, you usually sit down on a bath seat and use a shower head or fill a basin with water to wash yourself. The hot springs themselves were nice to sit in, and there were saunas in there too (YES).

We also did some weird hot-stone-sweating thing. Changed clothes into something they gave us to sweat into and went into a big room with a ton of hot stone beds. Of course since I'm kinda tall for Japan, the towel they gave me to put down on the stone so I wouldn't be burned was a bit too small. I ended up having to curl up a little to avoid burning myself. After maybe 20 minutes of sweating out, we hurried over to an ice room where there was a big pile of snow in the middle (I'll put up pictures later). And then after cooling off for a minute, we went back in to sweat out again. I don't know why anyone would do this, because it wasn't really that enjoyable and I didn't notice anything too rewarding about it.

After the hot springs we went to a shopping complex full of outlet stores. I went into the Vans, Nike and Addidas stores to see if I could find anything, but of course nobody in Japan has even heard of size 13 shoes, unless they're the ugliest models of some shitty action boot. But I did see that they're really into court forces here instead of Dunks, which is kinda weird because they never really make any court forces worth buying.

Also, did you know that Japanese voice-overs are some of the best things on television? I mean seriously. I was watching some commercial for 24 where some dude was trying to lower his voice a ton and saying stuff about Jack Bauer which just came out as "KO CHI RA JACK! JAPANESEJAPANESEJAPANESE". I dunno what they say afterwards, but they repeat that first part about fifteen times in the commercial.

There was also some magician's show that was overdubbed. The show was pretty much just some guy walking up to girls and flexing his magical muscles but the voice overs were what made it. Every single scene sounded like a conversation between a schoolgirl and a really lechereous old man. That's pretty much what all Japanese television is. For serious.

EDITUPDATE:
Pictures are very important

Gang tats not allowed

Giant shaved ice