That snowy road had led us to Sukayu Onsen (hot spring), near Mount Hakkoda. This was a place I’d been dreading, seeing as how it features konyoku bathing. What’s to dread about that? Well, konyoku means mixed bathing. As in men and women together. Naked.

Like any hot spring in Japan, swimsuits aren’t worn in the water. The point is to cleanse and relax, and nothing is meant to enter the water except for freshly cleaned skin. Konyoku onsen are now very rare in Japan, but they used to be the norm. I like the idea of them, and probably would have happily gone to one when I first came to Japan. But that was when I was young and, um, a bit smaller. Right now my XL size makes me a bit nervous even in women-only baths. As a foreigner I attract a lot of stares, and I imagine it would be even worse in a coed bath.

Still, I’m not particularly prudish about my body and had been slowly building up my courage. Without knowing what was going on, I was led to a bath. I was actually slightly disappointed to see that it was a women only bath. “Just a warm up”, I thought (trying out multiple baths during one onsen visit is common), and was pleased to see that the bath was extremely hot and let off so much steam that it was hard to see. As demonstrated by the three bathing beauties (Hitton, Yui and Kaori- I think) below.





The steam put me at ease and after a quick plunge in the women’s bath I was ready for the konyoku. But it wasn’t to be, as the girls were quite happy where they were and I had no idea how to get to the konyoku. Hard to believe how disappointed I was, after stressing about it for days.




There’s nothing better than a bottle of kohigyunyu (sweet coffee-flavoured milk) after a good soak in an onsen. Actually there is- a nice cold beer. But alcohol was forbidden on our trip, so we made do.




There was a poster of the Sennin-buro (thousand person bath), which is what Sukayu’s coed bath is called, in the lobby. In the poster, the bath is full of dozens of naked people, all old except for a handful of brave foreigners. I thought it would be neat to pose infront of it and pretend I was in the poster. The person taking the picture didn’t quite get it though, so it turned out to be a picture of Yui and I infront of the poster. Oh well. We were joined by a few more members of the group, and then a nice French gentleman who ended up giving us a bottle of wine. I spoke French with him a little (I said I was Canadian and couldn’t speak French- cool, huh?), and the fact that he understood me (or pretended to) pleased me in an odd way. I now have a little more sympathy for all those random Japanese people who come up to me on the street and try to start conversations in broken English.





It was almost dark when we were done, and we drove straight to our minshuku in Hirosaki. After dropping off our luggage, we headed out to an izakaya (pub) called Furosato no Hibiki Aiya.


Aiya is not a regular izakaya, however- it features performances of the shamisen (a three-stringed guitar-like instrument). Against a backdrop of a cool-looking dragon, two men performed in the tsugaru-jamisen style. Tsugaru-jamisen is a relatively new style, originally performed by blind players. It is characterized by the performers closed eyes and calm face contrasted with dramatic fingerwork.



This was the first man up, and he played a few songs by himself before teaming up with a man who I had thought was the bartender. I think he’s actually the owner of the izakaya. Finally, the owner played a song accompanied to a synthensizer and then a few solos.



The performances were all amazing, and although I was starving and there was a full table of food before us, I couldn’t bring myself to eat while they were playing. The songs were mesmerizing and demanded my full attention. This is nothing like the calm, almost dull shamisen sometimes heard in the background at Japanese restaurants- this was passionate, moving and dynamic music.



When they were done, they invited the audience to the stage. The only taker was Yui, who is from Kyoto and had studied the shamisen a little. She gave it her best shot, but had to give up halfway through when she forgot her fingerwork.




After that, we ordered a bowl of jappa-jiru to share. What is jappa-jiru? We didn’t know either, but it seems to be a meibutsu (famous product) of Aomori. It is a thick miso soup made with the head and bones of cod, which is called jappa in the Aomori dialect. It was hearty, warming and delicious and I wished for a bowl to myself.


Sukayu Onsen
0177-38-6400
50-banchi Kokuyuurin Sakayuzawa, Arakawa-san, Arakawa-minami, Aomori-shi, Aomori-ken


Furusato no Hibiki Aiya
0172-32-1529
2-7-3 Tomita, Hirosaki-shi, Aomori-ken