03/24/2026 JPBT Day 2 : Kudasai

The last two days blended into one. After we flew across the Pacific Ocean to Taiwan - cruising directly over our starting point, we flew back another 2 hours, landed… and hit the ground riding. My sister and her family had warned us: “no one talks to you in Japan!” So on à hunch, we decided to bring the tandem for this tour instead of our single bikes. It is a great ice breaker and worked its magic at the airport; people asked lots of questions.

The woman at customs was particularly dutiful. She asks us politely if she could open each of our items one at a time. She had to ask what almost everything was. She knew about the toothbrushes, for example.. but the bike parts and especially the diabetes kit really threw her for a loop. I said, “diabetes” hoping she would understand, but she and her helper looked at me quizzically. The next thing that popped into my head, as if I were doing charades, was to say the word,”American” and then feign a big belly. But then I decided that getting through this line quickly wasnt worth the humiliation of the stereotype joke - even if it would have worked.

A light drizzle followed us as we pedaled directly out of the airport and on to a narrow one-lane logging road. Technically we hadn’t slept in a day, but being on the bike felt good immediately. Janet quickly pointed out that the road was lined with redwood trees. We climbed steeply, only to come to a narrowing, overgrown trail. You will see from our track that we got lost! In our defense, is a perfectly reasonable thing to do when you haven’t slept in 24 hours and someone put trees everywhere. The map is littered with old roads - but we were totally trapped - all routes eventually petered out into overgrowth.

We finally made it to a busier paved road, and from there we descended into à valley of steam. Lots of little mounds were bubbling up hot water - this was an onsen heaven! The funny thing was rhat I told Janet our route wasnt going to pass near any hotsprings on this island… and here we were - surrounded by them!

We decided to get a hotel. The only problem is: the word for “hotel” (ホテル) that we learned on Duolingo did not appear on any of the signs!

We decided to go in and ask, “それはホテルです？”. The lady looked at me quizzically. I had just waltzed in and announced, “This is a hotel”.

Turns out that trying to cast a magic spell by claiming a random building to be a hotel did not work. I later remembered to add the “か” at the end of the sentence in subsequent attempts - making starements into a question.

The hotels were full, but we finally found a traditional room.

Note: this Japanese room does not come with a shower, à bathroom, or a bed. You may wonder what it does come with. It comes with a light - which we never did figure out how to turn off; but we were so tired we slept through it.

The woman hosetess was very cheerful and we felt welcome as she showed us around the property. Once again, we are going to have a lot to learn here… which is why I wanted to come. For example, since there is no shower, you’re supposed to use the public bathing room.

Being a bit of a prudish American, I asked the woman showing us around, “is there anything special we need to know about the Onsen?” - this time using a translator app on my phone. She smiled gleefully and said, “yes!” And she showed us inside the men’s side. I took very careful note of the icon above the door and committed it to memory. It will be easy; women’s side has a sort of “X” in the icon. So now I know: don’t go in there! Men’s looks like two running legs under a farmhouse window. We went back to the front room , figuring we would pay.. but someone had stolen our shoes!!

We were a bit shy to ask, but finally did. くさはどこですか？

They had moved them over to a hidden shoe box!

Now I know why “shoes” is one of the first things they teach you do on Duolingo. Even before bathroom.

All in all, there was a bit of discomfort and embarrassment, but today we learned that you can’t go wrong by just repeating “ください。” (please) over and over again. I was listening and it seems like people just keep saying it to mean “thank you” too. Speaking of politeness, Janet is already doing great at bowing and using the polite words. She is very agreeable about all this mayhem.

Well, im off to nibble the dried squid I picked up at 7-11.

じゃあね