When we finally reach Jason's town, Misawa, I'm ready for an onsen. Japan is basically one big volcano, and while that geologic predicament has its downsides (eruptions, lava flows, tsunamis) the upshot is that you've got nature's hot tubs all over the place. An onsen is a bathhouse built around a natural hot spring, and, as a marathon runner, Jason is a big proponent of the onsen's curative properties. I want to check one out before dinner. "Is there a place to change into my bathing suit?" Konoske asks. "Oh, you won't be needing that," Jason replies.
The onsen features a selection of pools - one of them fortified with minerals, another like a giant hot tub, one outdoors. Then there's the one that shoots electric current into the water. This, apparently, is supposed to be good for you. Jason climbs in, and when it's apparent that he's only feigning electrocution, I gingerly follow his lead. I stick my arm in front of the electrode on the side of the tub, and my muscles begin twitching involuntarily. Honestly, my arm feels good afterward - like I got a massage - but I can't imagine that electrocution, no matter how low-voltage, is really beneficial to one's health. "You know," I say to Jason, "in high school, I always figured that sooner or later we'd end up hanging out naked in an electrified tub in Japan." Jason considers this for a moment and replies, "A childhood dream, realized."
Having survived that ordeal, Jason provides us another challenge at dinner: eating fugu, the poisonous blowfish. If not properly prepared, fugu is deadly, and each year several people die of fugu poisoning. The fish is chewy and a bit bland. It's tasty enough when dipped in chili sauce - most things are - but I'm not sure that consuming blowfish ranks very high on my list of "things to risk my life over." Good to know.
The next morning it's executive-decisions time: Hokkaidō is out. Even if we made it to Hokkaidō, we'd have to just turn around and head back to Tokyo. We wouldn't have time to get off the highway and check out some of the interesting attractions of rural Japan - such as Hotel America.
On the way in last night, we'd passed a sign for Hotel America. When I asked Jason if that was a good place to stay, he said, "That's a . . . sexy hotel." Which was a euphemistic way of saying that Hotel America is a love hotel.
Love hotels are a subset of the Japanese lodging industry devoted exclusively to those travelers looking to get their freak on. You rent your room by the hour, and to ensure privacy, the entrance and the exit are on separate sides of the building so that you'll never see another patron (or an employee, for that matter - key collection and payment are automated). Love hotels are also big on fanciful themes. And the one nestled in the woods near Jason's town happens to have a theme centered on the U.S.A. Naturally, we have to go check that out.
At the entrance, we pass a gaudy, neon-lit sign that depicts the Statue of Liberty and looks as if it were uprooted by a tornado in Las Vegas and deposited here in this quiet forest. As we pull up the driveway toward a low set of buildings that look more like storage units than a hotel, an employee shoveling the driveway sees us and runs away in horror. I guess he didn't want to embarrass us, assuming that anyone checking into a pay-by-the-hour hotel adorned with a miniature Statue of Liberty on the roof has much capacity for embarrassment.
We take a few minutes shooting photos out by the sign, much to the consternation of a couple who keep driving back and forth, putting their tryst on hold until the camera guy leaves. Evidently, guests at the Hotel America don't care to push their theme so far as to include actual Americans. Can't say I blame them.
When we're done ruining the locals' love lives, we stop at a gas station for a fill-up (which costs about $75, not as shocking as I'd expected) and our daily plea for navigational assistance. Destination entered, we head - back south - for Nikko, a resort town that Jason recommended. After staying in austere, $50-per-night business hotels, I'm ready to find some dry roads and postcard vistas.
With that goal in mind, and in search of an empty two-lane, I exit the highway at the first opportunity. Maybe we won't make it to Nikko by nightfall, but I didn't come to Japan to spend 1000 miles on the highway, paying exorbitant tolls and eating rest-stop ramen. Almost immediately, we find the sort of road I'd imagined as the perfect Japanese country two-lane: a wide, lightly trafficked ribbon that hugs the sides of the mountains as it meanders up into the hills and down to the valleys on its way from village to village. In the populated areas, ramshackle buildings crowd the pavement on both sides, and finally, we start to receive the sort of perplexed stares that I had imagined we'd garner out in the sticks.
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