Oshima continued

Saturday 1/8 – Sunday 2/8:

After visiting the volcano we bicycled down the mountain again, but not on the side we came up, but the other side! The advantage of this was that we came to a small town with a great beach that we could swim on. The back side was that we now was on the other side of おしま (big-island), and that we had to either bicycle all the way up to the volcano again and down, or around the whole island, which was an even bigger trip, to get back.

Ignoring my faith in waiting, I had a fun time diving in the sea, and playing with the sand at the beach. There were lots of big and pretty seashells and fish in the sea that we don’t have in Norway.

It was my first time using my bikini at all in Japan, something you seldom get a chance to do. Japanese do swim in the ocean at summer time, but never in lakes, as they are perceived as more dirty, and also since they don’t have so many of them. Water parks or swimming pools are rare it seems. All the schools have a swimming pool, so everyone learns to swim, but besides from that I haven’t had much to do with water parks or swimming pools at all in my stay in Japan. Why bother when you have onsens ^^

Japanese bikinis were of course very different from my normal black style western bikini. They were of course all colourful and cute, as all underwear in Japan is to. It’s all about pink bows, laces, bubblegum colors and matching sets when it comes to Japanese underwear. In addition the bikinis were formed as skirts to make them a bit more modest for the shy Japanese.

The bad thing was since they were shy about their bikinis I started whishing I had a skirt bikini to! I don’t know if I ever mentioned this in my blog, but talking about shy Japanese people, there is one cultural thing about Japan that you seldom hear about before you go there, or at least I hadn’t heard about before I went. And that is the issue of cleavage :P

In Japan you can were as tiny miniskirts as you want, but if you have any cleavage to speak of everyone starts staring. So basically it is opposite of the west, where cleavage is totally normal, but short short skirts are reason to stare. Anyway, it didn’t take me and my other western girl friends long to notice this interesting cultural difference, and change our wardrobe while we were at it.

Other traits of the shy Japanese are that they always sleep in their pyjamas. But ok, to big of a detour, I have to get back on track. Lets see… Ok, after swimming in the ocean we went to clean of at a tiny onsen. It was my first joint sex onsen, but a pretty boring one as everyone used bathing suits :P Usually same sex onsens are nude once, with usually only guys entering, and the towel covered seldom female now and then. Sounds like an experience.

A cute volcano stone

The onsen was tiny but great, with a fantastic ocean sunset view. After cleaning up and getting into fresh clothes we ate a tasty sashimi/raw fish on top of rice dish. They didn’t have tuna on this island, as it was too distant from Tokyo to get it fresh enough for sashimi, but they had their own fish instead which was also delicious.

Another delicacy they had at this island was something called くさや , that is stinking fish. We could tell that they ate it at a neighbouring table…

After dinner it was time to head home, unfortunately. In no condition to cycle at all anymore that day, I lay down veto on the decision, and we ended up walking our bicycles up the mountain. The solution with least amount of contact with the bicycle seat, as I could stand rolling all the way down the other side.

We only had one headlamp, as I somehow had imagined lighted roads for some reason when packing my backpack. That and a thick fog coming inn halfway up the mountain made for a memorable trip.

Here we are at a vending machine on the top of the foggy mountain, no need to carry much water in Japan if you are close to civilization.

Cycling close to each other going down the mountain again, with the one wearing the headlamp at the back, we only met one or two cars luckily. The person not wearing the headlamp got a huge shadow of him/herself on the fog in front. In addition the fog was so wet that you collected raindrops on your eyelashes just from riding true it!

The next day it rained, a lot! We rested in the tent for a while until we had no other choice than to pack up and bicycle back in the poring rain to deliver our bicycles back. The bicycle renters were very friendly and gave us discount coupons for a new onsen close to the dock of our departing boat. They even gave us a ride there, despite us being dirty and soaking wet!

This particular onsen was a pool slash onsen, so we could play around in the pool together before going back to the separate onsen parts. After that we went home to Tokyo by boat, this time with seat tickets luckily. And also, we finished the day of with a tasty okonomiyaki dinner at a really cool place at Oookayama. It had been a perfect and memorable weekend ^^