箱根小涌園ユネッサン (Hakone Kowakien Yunessun)

My first big weekend adventure! My friends from the clinic and I went to the Yunessun in Hakone. Yunessun is the name for one of the onsens (温泉) which are hot springs which are often sex-divided nude hot baths. Yunessun (mostly) does away with that for a fun family-centered hot tub park! It. Was. Awesome.

This is us in front of the mascots (Spa Koneko, which translates into "Spa Kitten")... Japan seems to love their cat mascots. I'm not really sure why they have box-like heads but there you go (also they apparently have towels for bodies). I think the ones above are Boxappy and Bonjour-Non (girlfriend cat), but they have a giant family as shown in this lovely mural.

Anyway, Yunessun has three parts: Yunessun, YuTopia and Mori No Yu. The Mori No Yu is the traditional nude spa but we didn't go there. Yunessun is the part composed of fun little Roman Bath Theme hot tubs... one of them was filled with so much salt that you could easily float! It burned the skin though, let me tell you.

The best part of the Yunessun portion was the Doctor Fish... little fish that nibbled on your dead skin cells. Apparently the older you are, the more dead skin cells you have, and the more the fish love you (the old lady next to us had about 70% of the fish nibbling on her). The sensation was insane; I had to stop myself from jerking my foot away as the fish worked their pedicure magic. We also went down a water slide and met a four year old Japanese girl who spoke English and Chinese (her English was flawless)... I felt inspired.

The YuTopia part was by far the best portion... flavored water! There was a wine bath, a coffee bath, green tea bath and sake bath (as shown below)

How did people stop themselves from just getting a straw and slurping away, you ask? Well, they weren't really filled with wine, coffee, green tea or sake... though I think there was a little mixed in with the water, which was mostly color-enhanced. So that's how. I was a little disappointed, though considering the number of bodies in each pool it would have been too gross. My alcoholism has its limits after all.

We also sat in a chocolate bath and were lucky enough to be part of the twice daily show. This show consisted of a lady walking out with a bowl of melted chocolate, putting the melted chocolate in our hands, and us proceeding to rub it all over our faces, hands and bodies, before washing off in the chocolate bath. A similar event happened with wine (a guy poured an entire bottle of wine over people's heads).

I'm not really sure why we did it, but we did. I think that's also why the water was vaguely like the thing it was supposed to be. Apparently the individual bath ingredients are supposed to help the skin. 

Did I mention that this was outside in 30 degree weather? That's probably why it was awesome to slip into the hot tub and get warm again.  The other really nice thing about this place was that you were given a wristband that, via magnetic forces beyond my intellectual comprehension, unlocked your locker and acted like a charge card in the food court (you just swiped your wristband and paid later on). 

After spending the day there, we took the train to Tokyo. In Tokyo, we ate at an amazing pizza place and then promptly fell asleep (it was a long day sitting in hot tubs). In the morning, we went to Harajuku Station in Tokyo in the hopes of seeing some anime girls. I didn't see any, but we did to go Takeshita Street, which is known for its crazy fashion (mostly Lolita Goth). 

We also went to the Meiji Shrine, which was built to honor the former Emperor Meiji who "led the industrial growth and modernization of Japan". His soul (and that of his consort, Empress Shoken) is enshrined there. 

 Below are barrels of sake donated to the enshrined deities to show their respect. 

These were votives that you can buy and write on, then hang on the Divine Tree to have your dreams come true!

Last but not least, I had to take a photo of the plastic food they put on display so English speakers could just point at what they wanted:

And that's all for today. I plan on writing a lovely post about the toilets here... yes, they really do warrant their own post. Never second guess me again!