The Allure of PJs and Booty Shorts

El Hombre and I spent the past weekend at a beautiful, serene ryokan in Hakone. Our room faced a mountain resplendant with the colors of fall foliage and our balcony came with its own private onsen. Even though the entrance to the ryokan is just off a big street, once you are in the ryokan, all you hear is a whole lot of silence, broken only by the sound of trickling water from the onsens. It was easily one of the nicest accommodations I've ever stayed at, and definitely the most serene and peaceful. In fact, I don't think I truly understood the definition of serene until this weekend. It's just you, the sky, the mountain and the water. And the occasional fall leaf blown by the wind, floating towards you. Words nor pictures can do it justice.

There's only so much time you can spend in this oasis of silence and serenity, which is just as well because the cost of a single night in this ryokan was astronomical. So it's a good thing that after an entire day of bathing, meditating in silence, being bowed to by beautiful women in exquisite kimonos all day and night and eating kaiseki until it comes out of your ears, you're ready to leave and join the real world again.

El Hombre and I noted that one of the main draws of the ryokan experience is that you do virtually everything in your robe. Once you check in to the ryokan, you change into the yukata (a thin cotton Japanese-style robe with sash) and socks they provide and basically eat, drink, sleep, relax in these clothes for your entire stay. And there's something very relaxing, utterly lazy and luxurious about wearing a set of PJ's all day and night.

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When I first arrived in Tokyo at the end of July (the middle of Japan's oppressively hot and humid summer), I noticed that almost no one wore shorts. Definitely not men, but not even very many women. And skirts were usually long(ish), not shorter than 2-3 inches above the knees. I just assumed that Tokyo was not a shorts-wearing society and that despite the weird obsession with dressing up and walking around in costume, clothes-wise, Japan is modest.

But as the temperature drops and the weather gets colder and colder, the skirts and pants get shorter and shorter. These days, despite rain and bone-chilling weather, I see girls in bonafide booty shorts (with fishnet stockings) everywhere. And skirts seem to have gotten shorter as the temperature went down as well. At dinner with a couple Japanese-American visitors who do business in Japan, they half-jokingly noted: "that's why we don't come in the spring or summer, only in the fall and winter."

Every time I start thinking I'm starting to maybe, possibly understand the strange ways and habits of the Japanese people just a teeny bit, I encounter something that reinforces my initial and enduring conclusion: "these people are so weird - I don't get them!"

Why do they wear long pants and longer skirts in 100% humidity 100 degree weather? Why do they wear booty shorts in cold, rainy 40 degree weather? Why why why? It doesn't make sense! I want to plead with the Japanese people to please start making some sense. Because I really just don't get them.