Unzen: Hell is in Japan

Before I get to my main topic today I wanted to back track to last weekend's Kunchi festival. After checking with my history teacher I learned that the shrines (those boxes on poles) that house the Shinto gods do not contain any type of carving, if anything they will contain a mirror to reflect the image of the god and items associated with, or pleasing to, the particular Shinto deity. The Japanese believe it is rather silly to make an image of a god with human hands. The three deities that reside at Suwa Jinja (shrine) are the Suwa deity of the Suwa household, which is an ancestral spirit (Shinto gods are either ancestral or natural spirits; there are something around the order of 80,000 Shinto kami (spirits/gods)), the other two are a spirit of water and a spirit of earth and fire.
Also, these are the "death bees" that we have here in Nagasaki:

It is about the size of my thumb and took two solid hits from a text book without dying. These wander in often when we open the windows... we've stopped opening the windows.
Shinto gods and death bees aside this last weekend we went to Unzen, a small town south of Nagasaki with nice hot springs, though they are sulfur springs so anytime you are around them you can smell it. Unlike many of my classmates I did not find the smell very strong, but then again my father has exposed me to some pretty serious stuff before as he's shown me geology.
The morning began early, we were supposed to catch a bus from Sumiyoshi and go up to the college where we would take a two hour bus ride to Unzen. However, this trip was combining the JASIN and NICS (Nagasaki International Communication Studies), which is comprised of students from other Asian countries, primarily Korea and China. It turned out they sent the smallest bus for us all, very poor planning on their part. We were told to walk since we did not get on the bus because we could not fit. Fortunately, Samuel, a French student with JASIN who speaks both Japanese and English beyond his native tongue, was able to get us a bus to the foot of the hill of our school. The walk up was easy, this hill was nothing compared to the slope I have to climb at least once a day to go home. Once we were there we received our room assignments and seat assignments for the trip down (the goal was to mix up JASIN and NICS students so they would talk, it worked a little, but since most of us only had Japanese as a common language there was quite a bit of silence too) and we were off. Here are some photos from the coast as we made our way down.

After two hours and a windy mountain road we came to the small town. Historically Unzen was used as a place of torture for Christians during the time of persecution at the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate. From what I've heard in my Japanese classes it was very painful and did not result in death meaning someone could be tortured for a very long time. That historical fact aside, it was raining, which many of us had anticipated, but there was nothing you could do about it and since the hot springs at the resort were our main interest it didn't dampen our spirits. We were given about 10 minutes to drop our stuff off in our amazing (and very traditional) room:

I loved that there were slippers in this bathroom, they are used because the floor of a bathroom is considered dirty, this is the first hotel/inn I've seen them at though, and the size is consistent with normal Japanese bathrooms, though most have more technologically advanced toilets.

After putting our stuff away we came down to the main hall for lunch.

 Yes we all use the "V" when taking photos, because it's Japan and that's what you do.

(note: this is not a peace sign)

The meals here were amazing, and dinner was especially good and beautiful too, however it wasn't long after this point that I donned my yukata (it's a light robe) and started relaxing. Before that however we headed up the mountain by bus. Some of us had planned to hike it despite the rain, but the weather was so bad once we reached the halfway point that we simply were not allowed to. Here are some pictures I did take while we were there.

 This should have been an amazing view, but alas the weather was against me.

 I did notice this Shinto shrine and stopped in to take pictures.

I apologize for not knowing what those little boxes that look like bird feeders are, Shinto is new to me and I am slowly learning about it in all my various classes.

After hiking failed we went back to town and looked around for a little bit. There were two rather large Komainu (guardian dogs) so I took some pictures. My roommate thought it would be funny to stick his hand in the "a" dog's mouth, I'm not really sure if that would be looked down on, but it was raining and no Japanese people were around to be offended if it was.

The next series of pictures were taken of the various Jigoku (hell) that were nearby. Obviously from the weather you can tell they were not all taken the same day.

 Literally translated these signs say "It is dangerous to enter hell."

 These two pictures are from a small pavilion on the hill, it has many protective seals plastered on the beams of the building, though I'm not sure what it is being protected from.

 Despite being used for the treatment of diabetes it did not cure me of mine. Though how it treats other types is of sudden interest to me.

 This particular "hell" is named for a woman named Oito. She had an affair and murdered her husband. She was executed and this spring erupted on nearly the same day, so it was named after her as a reminder to other people, what a thing to be remembered for.

With the sight seeing done I went back to my room and removed all of my possessions and put on my yukata and headed for the bath. Imagine a pool of hot water the size of a swimming pool and you'll have a pretty good idea of what was there. I showered off first and then climbed in. These springs were no particularly hot, but it builds after awhile. I spent nearly an hour and a half my first time in and was very dehydrated when I got out. There was also a private bath outside as well that was more like a hot tube. Bathing was interesting because it is done fully nude and with no privacy from the other bathers (though there are two bathes to divide the sexes), I had only bad memories from Jr High and High School with mass bathing, but it was nice to see that at our age it was not a big deal and after a minute or two I was completely relaxed and enjoying myself. I am sure you can understand why I do not have pictures from this.
After my first bath I went to my room and rehydrate before going down for dinner, which had so many courses that I almost did not finish it. But it was very good, very traditional, and beautiful to look at. I found a picture a friend took at the start of dinner, this does not show the added courses they brought after we started.

After dinner it was back into the bath and then up to my room. That was not the end of the night though, we ended up being up until about 3:30am hanging out and having fun.

From right to left: Someone in shorts, Daniel, Michelle, Dani, Jessica, Spencer, Yuya, Lucy, and Nick, the reason everyone was in our room to begin with (we went visiting people and took their stuff). We are wearing our yukatas.
After getting about 3 hours of sleep we were up again and back in the bathes one last time before getting breakfast and packing up. From there we headed out to a museum that records the disaster of Mt Unzen in 1991 (and in 1792), if you want more details you can find them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Unzen

 These photos show the actual volcano.

 This just made me think of my family for some reason...

 This shows one of the two pyroclastic flows that killed 43 people.

 This was the mud flow that buried many houses, shown below.

 The next couple pictures recreate the aftermath and show items recovered from the town.

 This was an interesting display made using paper crane in offering prayers for the people who died.

 The next several photos are houses that were buried in the mud flow. These are real houses.

After visiting the museum we loaded up in the buses and went home. The weekend was great and I enjoyed the hot springs, but the structure of the weekend left me with many things I was unable to explore and left me feeling a little hurried on Sunday, still it was a nice experience to have and I am glad to have had the opportunity.