| Ski Japanese Volcanoes |
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Page 3 of 4 THE NEXT MORNING DAWNS MISTY AND DRAB. Out the window, clouds obscure Yotei volcano, and the birch trees bend in the breeze. It’s no day for skiing, so I casually wander down to the breakfast buffet. I pause over a pink-and-purple stew labeled “salted and fermented fish guts,” which looks like nothing was lost in translation. “It’s a good day to soak,” Kazama says. 
The Ryotei Kuramure spa in Otaru
Renowned architect Makoto Nakayama designed Kuramure, which opened in 2002, with corrugated-metal walls and a boxy exterior to look like a sleek, industrial toolshed. Inside, cool slate floors hold chic leather chairs before windows that frame a courtyard graced with modern sculpture. A man in a finely tailored suit introduces himself as Sato with a deep bow and offers me frothy green tea. My two-story room is immaculate, with tatami splayed over oak floors, sliding rice-paper doors, and a spacious granite tub that fills with warm mineral water piped from an underground source. I step into the bathroom and put on the inn’s samue, a Karate Kid–looking outfit made of an impossibly soft silk blend known as oshima tsumugi. “You can wear this at any time in the hotel,” Sato tells me. “To the bar, to dinner, as you like.” Daddy likes, and I wander off for a soak. I’d been warned that there was a strict etiquette to bathing in a Japanese onsen, but I’d forgotten one of the most basic principles: 男 or 女? Pick the wrong one, and you risk a terribly embarrassing moment stumbling into the women’s changing room. Pick the right one, and it’s time to get comfortable bathing naked with strangers. I pick the right door—男—and enter a room with elegant benches. I stash the samue and move into a wash room, where I sit starkers on a wooden stool and fill a cedar pail with warm water. Tradition says to wash feet first, arms next, then slowly work toward the heart. The pool sits outside, a rectangular tub of dark granite filled with water that’s a feisty 107 degrees Fahrenheit. Thick locks of steam spin up the mountainside as fog hangs in the forest like gauze. The Asarigawa Creek slips by, and to my left I can make out the slopes of a ski area called Otaru Tenguyama. As if on cue, a light snow begins to fall. After a half-hour, I’m as wrinkled as wet nori, so I leave to belly up to the inn’s bar for some sake before dinner. Barkeep Nick Quick, a 27-year-old immigrant from Brooklyn, pours me a shot of Ushio, made locally, and sets it on the bubinga hardwood bar. “I don’t want to say this place is exclusive, but some local taxi drivers don’t know where we are,” says Quick, who adds that Japanese actors come in often. A well-manicured Japanese man with a head of spiky hair and a slender woman on his arm sit at the other end of the bar. They look like movie stars in their samues, which hang elegantly on their thin frames. Suddenly I feel silly and awkward. “This feels a little strange,” I confess to Nick. “What, to be at a bar in your pajamas?” he laughs. Truth is, the garb is much too soft to take off, so I leave it on for dinner, which tonight is a dazzling array of tuna, crab, wasabi roots, pickled lotus flower, salmon roe with egg custard, mum flower tempura, nasu pickles, flatfish, and angel food cake slathered in a translucent pink bean jelly. Afterwards, Quick pours me a plum liqueur. Through the windows, I watch fat flakes cling to slender branches. Like magic, the cherry trees turn white. |
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