#104:The Gold Water Cure
On honeymoon days 1-4 (Osaka and Arima Onsen)
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When I was in the thick of honeymoon planning, scheduling an onsen town after two nights in Osaka gave me an embarrassing amount of satisfaction. Osaka, known for being both more gregarious and cheaper to fly into than Tokyo, could match the energy of our Hong Kong jaunt before the hot springs brought our nervous systems back to Earth; buses would ferry us to the baths, and then onwards to Kyoto, relieving us of the physical and mental stress of train travel with four suitcases.
I was smug. I thought I’d enjoy the R&R in a spiritual sense, not in the way consumption-ridden Victorians needed stints at Swiss sanatoriums. But as I wrote last week, my body decided otherwise.
Thankfully by the time we got to the hot springs, the worst was over and I was left with a disgraceful cough. (In Asia, coughs are met with contempt and I know this because I side-eye coughers.) In Osaka, I stubbornly refused to properly rest, telling myself I’d already done time with my one horizontal last day in Hong Kong. It turns out having little to do apart from sleep, submerge myself in hot water, and eat things poached in dashi for several days was exactly what I needed.
Below is a log of those first four days…
