Onsen Eggs

My lower back decided to remind me on Saturday night that I'm fully middle aged, with an ache that made walking a little difficult, though oddly enough bending over wasn't. After some relief on Sunday morning, it picked up where it left off and lasted through most of the day. Also, I had an article that needed finishing, which gobbled up a lot of Sunday. Not one of my better weekends, but at least it wasn't especially warm.

What I needed to do was visit an onsen, a Japanese hot springs, as I did in early April 1992: "It was a fine thing to soak my expansive self in the hot waters [I wrote], eat a funky Japanese dinner and breakfast at the nearby inn, and play Othello and Uno with my companions, only partly sharing a common language.

"Then there were the onsen eggs, looking like standard, factory-farm chicken eggs, except they are sold in fives and tens in fish-net bags at every store of every description near the onsen. You take these eggs to a place in town where low stone walls square a pool of hot water. Not a well, exactly, but you can taste the water there and boil your eggs by tying them to the crisscross of bamboo poles over the stone square and letting them dangle deep in the water for 12 minutes (large clocks are posted nearby for timing). Peel and eat. Everybody seemed to be doing this, but so far I don't know why that is the custom at this particular onsen town. The eggs come out a little sulfurous, like the water."