The hot spring in 5 colors

During the short trip to Japan, I went to a hot spring in Nagano prefecture. The hot spring name is Goshiki onsen. Go means five, and shiki means color, and onsen means hot spring, so five colors hot spring. Precisely, color of water surprisingly changes day by day in one of five colors, depending on the circumstance around the hot spring. When I went there at the end of December, it was heavy snow storm in the area, so many customers except me cancels a stay, so it was like that everything was for me temporarily. And the color which I was enjoying is dilute black at that time.

When I was in Japan, I used to enjoy hot springs around Japan. Hot springs always makes me feel better, removes my daily stress, refreshes my mind, giving me vitality for next day, and makes me believe that I`m gonna come again. Fortunately, We, Japanese, can enjoy many hot springs around Japan from the northern part to the southern part. So We can expect different type of hot springs every time. Another good point I`m always thinking is that drinking a beer immediately after enjoying it is really good taste. It`s because much water is lost gradually from a body during staying a bath, and a body naturally needs water. So that`s why you can taste it better than usual.

I have an episode about the onsen which I stayed this time. Please have a look at the picture above. You can see that an old man enjoys the onsen with smile. He is the owner of the onsen and 92 years old now. As I mentioned before, a customer was only me so I could talk a lot with people who work in the onsen. He is one of them. When I was talking the bath, he came and spoke to me. At first, he said to me that he was involved in the world war II and worked at the border between China and Russia to monitor Russian enemy. At that time, Russia was Japan`s enemy. He was a little bit higher position, so he was staying away from battles and collecting information about Russian which was sent from field agents. When Russian enemy was attacking his location, it was just announced that Japan was surrendering and the war was over. Therefore, he unfortunately lost a lot of his friend, but fortunately could survive the war.