- The first picture is of a painted picture we saw on a buisness that had closed down for the night and was interesting consider Mickey Mouse is not part of Asian culture per se.
-Second is of a warning sign at Spa World that says that they do not accept anyone with Tatoos or may be drunk and disorderly. In the states this could be considered discrimination, but I don't believe it is...
-The next is of Kara in front of Spa World's entrance. We'd have more pictures, but like I said it is a nude spa.
-Lastly is a picture of Kara in one of the side markets with the "Hitachi" building in the background. It is another one of the buildings that provide an amazing view of the city of Osaka, but again you have to pay for entrance.
Today was a good day because it was more relaxing. We first went to get more Yen in order to have enough for the day's fun and have enough to get to the airport tomorrow. The interesting thing about today was our experience partaking of Japanese culture in one of the most personal ways possible. We decided to end our trip with a treat to ourselves by going to Spa World. Spa World is a large complex that has several large spa areas. Normally it costs 2,700 Yen to go to Spa World, but they had a deal going on where we could go for 900 Yen each. The facility was not English speaking friendly with very few signs in English, but we did figure it out.
Spa World has three levels Men's on Level 4, Women's on level 6, and Kids/Mix Gender on Level 8. The interesting thing about the Japanese is that they have a tradition of bathing nude, together. So, Spa World is a nude experience, except on Level 8. Kara's experience on level 6 included different themed spa rooms Japanese, Bali, Persia, and India. She says that she enjoyed Bali the most because it was prettiest, the water was not too hot, and the she was by herself in it for a while. She was rather upset by how so many women brought in young boys to the women's nude spa when the kids were between 8-10 at times! Besides the Bali Spa Room Kara enjoyed her time with me on level 8 where we sat in a really really large hot tub, went on an outside loop of warm water, and swam around the lazy river 6+ times.
My experience at Spa World was great. Unlike Kara the water was not too hot for me, which I usually don't say because I do not like really hot showers. The men's spa was pretty cool. The themed rooms for the Men were Rome, Finland, Atlantis, and Spain. My favorites were Rome and Spain. There were many saunas throughout the facility and I experienced both the regular sauna (which had a t.v. station on behind plastic) and the salt sauna (which had pretty music playing). My favorite thing to do was to become really hot and then hop into the cold bath they had because no one else was in it. Rome was cool because it had baths that were different colors and had different herb ingredients added into the water. One was purple and one was yellow. The purple may have had lavender ingredients and the yellow was warm and felt/smelled as though you were dipped into a luke warm pool of Chamomile tea. There was another pool that was like a cave and had water that was filled with some sort of honey ingredient that made your skin really smooth. Spain was cool because it had a little water fall, was outside, and one section had pool chairs underwater that you could lay on. It was a lot of fun and like Kara's locker room, mine had a large t.v. room/lounge with a bunch of leather chairs that was fairly quiet, but I didn't bring a book to read as I forgot...so neither of us spent much time in them. Needless to say both of our experiences being nude were very enlightening and made us feel a little more Japanese.
After our spa experience we went back to our hotel and ate dinner. We then walked down the shopping alley next to our hotel in order to look for my souvenir. I say alley because the Japanese do much of their shopping in alley bike/walkways or in subway stations. We found a cute cup with two owls on it in love and next to the handle was a picture of the male owl, so I felt it was a guys cup and since we were in Japan because of love I felt it fitting and appropriate. It was only 100 Yen so very cheap... even better. After finding my cup we went back to the hotel to pack our bags for the early flight tomorrow. That is all, I have to say for tonight, it has been an interesting night! Sincerely, Grant
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