Fuutennojack: Nozawa Onsen

Nozawa Onsen

野沢温泉

Nozawa Onsen is a great little hot spring village in Nagano prefecture.

I go up there at least once every winter. Nozawa is very popular with Aussies

and on weekdays it often seems like half the people on the mountain are

non-Japanese. Japanese are seemingly always anxious when lots of foreigners

start showing up someplace in Japan. You hear how places are going to lose their

unique "Japanese-ness" and that sort of thing. My impression, from talking with the

couple who run the inn I always stay at, Minhusku Kakushige,

http://homepage2.nifty.com/kakushige/index.htm

and the men at the public baths, is that the locals appreciate the visitors but worry

that the town looks less and less Japanese with all the foreign faces. It seems like

run of the mill "shimaguni konjo" (island country mentality) thinking to me. All of the

Australian visitors I've met up there are very positive about Japan and go out

of their way to learn and obey the local customs.

Dinner at the inn. It's hard to beat after a long day on the mountain.

Note the raw horse meat on the right.

it was delicious! After dinner, a stroll down to the local

neighborhood public bath and you're ready for bed by 9:00pm

there might be 50 people in this same picture

Nice and warm in front of the inn on my way back from the hot spring bath

My room with the kotatsu (table with a heater underneath

covered with a blanket) right in the middle

Fuutennojack