03/25/2026 JPBT Day 3 : Skull and Crossbones

We never did find the light switch last night, but we were so exhausted, we slept with the light on. Guess that makes it a bit like a “Motel 6”

We knew we had breakfast at 8am, so when I woke at 4, I began studying the “right things to say,” at the table. The first one was “いただきます。” You are supposed to bow your head and say it before eating. I figured this was going to be another one of those phrases buried in politeness, until I looked it up. It means “let’s eat!”

At 7:59 and 59 seconds, I put my hand on the door to open it for going downstairs to eat. But at that very moment, à young man and woman were at our door. “こんにちは” (hello) they both sang out. They were each holding a tray with 9 ceramic vessels on them, and arrived as if they had been synchronized with an atomic clock.

The bowed and entered the room, arranging the trays neatly on our table. Breakfast in the room! I think we were both a little relieved not to have to try and communicate downstairs.

I consume à lot of content from so-called “health influencers” either via podcast or YouTube, and something they often mention is “people don’t get fat in Japan because the food is so healthy there.” Clearly, these people haven’t actually been to Japan. Of the 9 dishes, there was only one vessel with more than 60 calories - the rice bowl. One had Half a radish, another had a teaspoon of Natto, which felt less like breakfast and more like a lab sample. Tiny portion sizes and à forced slowdown (due to all the dishes and maneuvering with chopsticks) = portion control.

Janet tried to open the hard boiled egg - only to discover that you’re supposed to drink the jello-like egg with soy sauce. This seems deplorable to someone who doesn’t like eggs - but I slurped it down and actually enjoyed it.

We rode in the rain, following our route, but immediately came to a closure. In our usual fashion, we maneuvered the bike under the blockage. Every 100’ leading up to this there had been signs saying that this road was closed. If you know anything about me and Janet, you know that we very frequently encounter closed sections - only to muddle our way through. Today, however, we came upon one of the workers, hoping we could sneak past. At home, under these circumstances, I would have braced myself for a loud voice and some “f-bombs,” so something seemed awry when the guy who was smiling and bowing. Optimistically, I pulled out my phone to translate - hoping he would say, “yes, you can pass through on a bike.”

Instead, his reply was to cross his arms across his chest; the wrists as high as his cheeks - making a sort of skull-and-crossbones with his arms. The last time I saw that (yesterday) it meant “we have no hotel rooms available, thank you very much, please enjoy your suffering elsewhere”. Clearly, the skull-and-crossbones is the sign you don’t want to see ☠️. But here is the important lesson: when someone is smiling at you, bowing, and saying please and thank you… you’re gonna listen to them! Seriously, how much better behaved would we be if “getting in trouble” was met with politeness instead of yelling and anger. We thanked him and bowed. How could we disobey the nicest man in the world?

The rain drove down hard upon us. If I’m being honest, it wasn’t that fun riding - but the paved one lane roads felt like our own personal bike path. I can’t wait until the rain stops so we can really enjoy it.

We decided to sleep indoors again, and this time we did see the word “ホテル” (hotel) right as the rain was coming down particularly hard.

There was an elderly man sitting outside under a small shelter. We had peeked in a door from the outside, but this looked like a shrine or someone’s house. We couldn’t tell, and went back to the man to ask if this was a hotel.

“はい” (yes) he replied. Excellent! I asked if we could please get a room using my phone.

“はい” (yes) he replied while continuing to smoke and rock in his chair.

I told Janet the good news. But I wasn’t sure what to do next. I asked him several questions, hoping to get the check-in process started. To each question he leaned in to listen to my phone, and he responded the same “yes!” - but continued to rock in his 4 legged chair.

This man had 2 settings: “yes” and rocking.

Soaked to the bone, we discussed amongst ourselves. What do we do? Is this guy not understanding our phone? Janet started to enter the part that looked like a house; the guy paid her no heed. She returned, “There is a grandma in there and another very old person,” Janet explained.

We discussed whether or not we should leave. But then some more people showed up. One guy said “hello” in English, and we did a lot of back and forth with a woman using the phone. We got some skulls and crossbones from her, but later discovered that was a reference to food (they didn’t have any)… not a reference to the room, which it seemed they might have after all.

Finally we were ambling about inside the building with “hello-man,” his likely daughter, the 4’ tall, bent-over grandmother, and the woman who seemed to understand the Japanese coming from my phone. They played the game, “what’s behind door number x” as they opened doors to rooms, walked around inside laughing and talking - only to emerge and select another room. Finally, room number 3 passed all of their tests. They quickly swept the crumbs off the table in the middle, brought in à tea preparation tray, and boom! We had a quiet place to get out of our wet clothes and dry off! I wish I knew what was so funny because then I could have told you these great jokes! But maybe the joke was on us, in which case you already got it!