Friday, Sept. 15 
Jigoku Onsen resort 

  Jigoku means "hell," and the name is sometimes given to hot springs (onsen) because the bubbling water and rising steam bring Hades to mind. We took a quick bath at the onsen nearest our cabins. No faucets at this one -- you splash water from the tub onto yourself to rinse off soap and dirt before you soak. There was a cup for drinking the hot water from the spring; supposedly it's good for you. It smelled of sulphur and tasted metallic. 

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  Jigoku Onsen resort has hotel-type rooms and efficiency units in a couple of different buildings, a few cabins and some furnished trailers. Amid the accommodations are several indoor and outdoor onsens. 
 
The complex also has a restaurant decorated like a hunting lodge -- taxidermy, exposed beams, etc. -- where the menu features wild game. 
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Notice the people behind us. People walk around the resort, even go out to eat, wearing only their yukatas (robes) and sandals.
Lynne & Rick, clean and hungry
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Kazuko picks up the phone to summon the waitress
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  The food was brought raw, on skewers, to be cooked over the hot coals: whole trout (taken live from a tank in the front of the restaurant that I hadn't noticed on the way in, and still wriggling on the skewer), whole quail, wild boar meat, duck meat, and whole sparrow (tiny head and all -- even Kazuko was grossed out by this). Other skewers had tofu with a tasty miso (bean paste) sauce, vegetables, potatoes and gelatinous fish paste. And of course there was rice. 
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Rick devours a sparrow. 

It's crunchy! Rick didn't eat the head. Neither did anyone else. Kazuko wouldn't even taste the sparrow. 

   After dinner, Neal and Rick went to another onsen, a mud bath that we all would try the next night. I set up the bedding in our cabin and listened to the wind and rain. Apparently the typhoon was still hovering to the southwest.
 
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