O.K. back to the trip.
After the sake festival I thought I would head over to the other side of the river for dinner. Like usual my phone's battery was low so I was only able to get an quick overview of the neighborhood I picked. There was a Tonkatsu restaurant and a few blocks away a public bath which could be nice for post dinner relaxation. I crossed over the bridge and continued down a wide 4 lane street. Not the most scenic neighborhood. Before too long I passed the onsen. To get to the restaurant I needed to hang a right through a more residential area. It was not very well lit and for the next 6 blocks or so I was wondering if my choice for dinner was a good idea. There was no sign of any shops or restaurants. In my mind I was picturing me showing up at a small neighborhood restaurant for an awkward meal.
Turned out the restaurant Katsuretsutei was pretty large and in the same parking lot as a grocery store. Now I know after after reading up that it is one of the best places for Tonkatsu in Japan.
It does not have a Michelin star but is in the Michelin guide. Stepped inside to discover a genkan with cubby holes to put your shoes. Uh-oh, I was wearing the sandals I had bought earlier in the day. No socks. I quickly walked over and stood in front of the reception so they could not see my feet. The waitress lead me to a table and I was seated and able hide my feet under the table.
This restaurant was big and there were a lot of groups of people having dinner. Seemed like the kind of place you would go for a special occasion, birthday, business meeting etc. The closest thing we have here atmosphere wise would be a nice steak house. The menu was very easy to understand mainly because it had photos and not a ton of options. Just like the other places I had been you can pick what type of pork, portion size , and add on of big shrimp. So I ordered the Kurobuta.
After the waitress took my order she returned with this set of instructions in English.
Here's the dinner
This place is the winner of my Kurobuta tour. Everything was perfect. You can kind of figure out from the instruction card the idea is to create different bites with each piece of pork depending on what you dip or put on it. Maybe dip in the traditional sauce and a little mustard, or just press a piece into a dish of salt with a little mustard, etc. Two different sauces, salt, and hot mustard give enough combos to make one cutlet very interesting and I can see why someone might want to get the double portion. The winner!
After dinner I was able to find my way back to the main road and the public bath/onsen. It was a couple of hours later now and this place was jumping. I'm still trying to process this place. Coming from the U.S. I am inclined to think something a little risque was going on but I still truly don't know. For one thing, it was dark now and the parking lot for the bath was shared with a place that appeared to be some kind of hotel with red light coming through the blinds on all the rooms. Hmmm. The entrance looked like a take on a Roman bath with columns and such. Hmmm. What the hey, I would at least go in the lobby and check it out if it seemed weird I could just bail.
The lobby was even more perplexing. There were men and women which was normal for onsens and there was blue entrance for men and red entrance for women. O.K. but unlike other onsens the lighting was a little dimmer, there was a fair amoung of neon lighting and loud music More like a nightclub. Adjoining the lobby was a snack bar type thing and from what I could gather no alcohol just dessert type offerings. Hmmm. To get into the bath you had to buy a ticket at a machine which is normal. Luckily I had just enough battery for Google translate so I could read what the 2 dozen buttons said. I was able to find in the top rows the button for men's bath and towel. I think the onsen ticket was 500 yen and the towel 200 yen so after exchange rate about $5. I gave the ticket to the woman at the counter and she gave me my towel.
I was all set so I went in. The setup was the same as any onsen. There's first a room to change clothes, blow dry your hair, etc with lockers to put your belongings. The next part was pretty standard too. A bunch of stations to scrub down and clean off. O.K. I was just doing my thing just trying to stand out too much. Thing is when you are the only naked Westerner standing out is unavoidable to some extent. One thing I don't think I have mentioned before is that tattoos are not permitted in onsens. Reason being that Yakuza or Japanese gangsters have tattoos and used to hang out in public baths to have meetings etc. To keep the Yakuza out of onsens there was a no tattoo rule put in place. So if you are Japanese and have tattoos almost all onsens are not going to let you in. It is a slightly different story for non Asian Westerners. I have tattoos but no one has ever said anything to me about them. I'm a white guy so there's no way I am Yakuza.
Once I was done rinsing off I headed to the bath. There were a lot of guys there in their early 20's. I would say about 30 or so guys all in their early 20's. The busiest onsen I have been to. I got into the large bath with about a dozen other guys. Within about two minutes I was the only guy in the bath. All the dudes got out and moved to the other side of the room. I hung out for another 10 minutes or so. Nobody got back in the bath. I then decided to check out another pool. All the dudes who got out were now at the other pool hanging out joking around talking etc. It became apparent that almost everyone in the room knew each other. When I walked over to the area of the pool it got real silent. I decided it was wise to hit the cool off pool instead where nobody was and then jet.
It was an interesting experience. I was feeling good from the onsen but the atmosphere was weird and perplexing. Thug hangout? Love hotel in the parking lot? Strange.
After the strange onsen I decided to continue the seedy side of life theme by popping into a pachinko parlor. So far on my Japanese adventures I had not visited one. There are a lot of them and in suburban places they are huge. Basically pachinko parlors are casinos. The pachinko machine is like a combination of a slot machine, pin ball machine, and video game. So, I went in with a 1000 yen in hand and left about 15 minutes later without it. The pachinko parlour was also a slightly awkward experience. When I went in I showed the woman at the front the 1000 yen and said I wanted to play. She looked really uncomfortable and said wait a minute. The manager showed up and he showed me how the machine works. The basic idea is you put money in the machine and all these metal balls fill up a reservoir at the bottom. Then you shoot the balls like in pinball and they randomly go to different areas where you might get awarded with jackpots of other balls. What makes it really confusing is there is a video screen in the middle with a separate controller that you need to use when certain things happen on the screen. It's super confusing and before long your money and all the balls are gone. I knew I was most likely going to lose the 1000 yen when I went in but I don't think the staff knew that hence them being uncomfortable. Like slots there are a bunch of down and out old people chain smoking in the parlor. Kinda of depressing but maybe you want to check it out once. Once was enough for me.
It was an interesting night. Headed back to the business hotel and watched some TV.
