Chapter 1

Sometimes in the later mid 80's I was living in Japan and a Japanese business associate has invited me to do some wintersports near his vacation house in the northern part of the main island of Japan. It was a long drive and it was late in the season.

I was a bit reluctant at first because I'd rather go out anonymously by myself visiting the waterholes of Tokyo and getting some attention from the females there getting a boost in my ego.

He told me that I wouldn't be sorry; it supposed to be a nice place with a natural hot spring and some nice skiing and good restaurants. I felt a bit helpless because I wasn't able to speak much Japanese yet.

Arriving at his house many hours later, the house did not seem to be insulated very well and it was very cold there. 'Lucky enough' the whole house seemed to be frozen, water pipes and all, and could not be used so he promised to find a hotel somewhere in town.

Just a few miles down the road there was a large complex with a hot springs pond so called 'onsen' in Japanese and lucky enough it had a small Japanese style hotel on the compound with just a few rooms. There was still one room available because the other rooms were rented out to some kind of group. The room was pretty much empty, the only furniture was a low table with 2 pillows to sit on and the sleeping mattresses where stored in the cupboard. A shared toilet in the hallway and for bath and shower there were the communal bathing facilities by the sauna downstairs.

After the check-in procedure we headed towards the hotsprings, the communal washroom was divided into separate facilities for men and women and so were the sauna's. Too bad, so much for luck. So after a good scrub and wash we sat in the sauna for a while and then we went outside to the hot pools.

There was a large main one and naturally divided for men and women however the division wall was made up of big stone boulders in the middle but they only reached to halfway the pool and you could 'swim' around it. The pool was only about 2 to 3 feet deep. I was told that in this Onsen it was allowed for the women to come to the men's side if they wished but it was for the men not allowed to cross over to the women's side. They did that so women can have some privacy if they wished but they could join their partner if wanted to.

Sauna's and hot springs are almost always done in the nude but you are carrying a small square towel a little larger than the size of a postage stamp, that you can hold in front of your genitals when you are walking around. Once sitting in the pond they usually place the wet towel on top of their heads. The water was hot and the snow on the banks of the pond was cold so you had to walk fast from the sauna to the pool.

My business friend, who was a lot older than me, and myself were sitting and enjoying the slight sulphuric hot water and it seemed we were the only ones there. Suddenly we looked up and there 2 women floating on their belly and using their hands on the bottom to crawl towards us, were coming from the other side of the natural barrier in the middle. Just wanted to keep us company I guess and they were giggling a bit as Japanese women tend to do.