Okayama Countryside

After visiting Tottori, we drove to another place in the Okayama Prefecture which had a famous onsen (hot spring). In most onsens in Japan, the men and women are separated and everyone is expected to be naked. In fact, you actually aren’t allowed to wear any bathers or clothes at all.

Due to this fact, Tina and Lauren feel shy about entering onsens. I actually like them a lot and I don’t mind that you have to be naked because the men and women are separated and it is also quite liberating. In this particular onsen that we visited, the men and women were together, but Shinya assured us that we could wear our bathers in the water, so this didn’t seem as daunting to us. Anyway, we got to the place and found that the onsen was in an open space for everyone to see and the only people that were in there were naked men! There was one woman in there who had a towel wrapped around her, but the rest of them were men! We were so embarrassed that we decided against going in the onsen. Instead, we ended up having a foot spa so the only thing we had to take off were our shoes and socks! That wasn’t so bad!

It was a beautiful area nevertheless, and there was a river flowing through the town encompassed by a huge cliff face covered with momiji trees. I’m glad we got to see such a beautiful place – even though we didn’t end up swimming with the naked men!