Japan: Bed, Onsen & Beyond

Making sure to get off all of the soap -- a potential faux pas -- we slipped waist-deep into the hot water. Although it was blazing hot outside, the breeze coming down the mountains suddenly seemed very cool. After a few moments, we were chilled enough to submerge neck deep. The rotenburo was lined in rough black stone with an underwater bench and a wood lip for cooling off, and it was surrounded by a carefully manicured garden enclosed by a privacy fence. We could look beyond the fence to the mountains covered in cedar and pine trees. When breezes washed down into the valley, the trees swayed in a serpentine path that made it easy to imagine tengu stalking the woods.

We alternated hot soaks with plunges in a cool pool inside a bath house, then another scrub with a hand shower. Josh was so relaxed his legs went rubbery. "I can barely walk," he said on the way to our room, where we dozed while waiting for dinner.

When the dinner call came, we were led down a path to a wooden pavilion perched on a riverbank. Our table overlooked a small pool, mossy rocks and a steep, fern-covered embankment.

Before us were an array of plates: two bowls of sushi, lightly cooked vegetables and a plate with a sweet marinated plum and a meat sashimi -- most likely horse, called basashi . There was a covered dish over a canned-fuel flame cooking beef strips, small white gangly mushrooms called enoki, carrot slices cut in leaf shapes, and slices of shishito (like a very mild jalapeno).

As each plate was cleared away, another appeared. The piece de resistance : a small smoked whole fish, artfully posed as if it were swimming among an underwater array of edible flora. It was as much taxidermy as cuisine.

We were then brought a small plate of tempura, followed by squash, more shishito and a tiny fillet of fish with a little tail attached. Then rice and miso soup, followed by watermelon and tea.

Josh, logy from the food, retired. I, however, took another trip to the onsen to watch the stars come out as I soaked. The hot pool was nearly deserted. One bather dozed on the wood lip of the pool, while a young father was introducing his infant son to the onsen. The other bathers politely acknowledged me; only the child stared. Returning to the room, I found a snack of rice and tea. That would hold me until breakfast.

Because the Japanese traditionally bathe before dinner, when I made an early-morning visit to the onsen I had it all to myself -- a good strategy for anyone seeking privacy. All that was left was a breakfast as elaborate and exotic as our dinner had been: dry smoked fish, shrimp, a creamy textured potato, red miso soup with seaweed, cooked tofu and veggies, and a bowl with raw egg floating in what looked like miso and shredded vegetables, which -- imitating the other diners -- we mixed with hot rice.

As we prepared to leave, Joshua -- he of cocked eyebrow -- lamented, "Are we really only staying one night?"

Roy Furchgott last wrote for Travel about Vienna.