No Pictures, Please.
I have a confession; my first exposure to the culture of Japan was the book Shogun, by James Clavell. I honestly love his work, great literature or no--he writes books that are close to or more than a thousand pages long, and there are few things that make me as happy as a giant book. And I do think that he does a reasonably good job of being culturally sensitive and as historically accurate as you can be in a sweeping epic/romance novel, but it remains that I read Shogun for the first time sometime in my early teens, and the extent of my cultural knowledge of Japan for a long time included ritual suicide and taking really hot baths. I've expanded my knowledge since then, but when we visited Japan for the first time recently, my inner thirteen-year-old demanded that I experience at least one of those.
You are in luck, friends, as I'm a walking mishap, and this is the beginning of a moderately entertaining story that involves me making all the mistakes. It's also the story of one of the most amazing things I've ever done, so, like the ancient Greeks used to do, I ask you to hear me truly (and forgive my ignorance, knowing that I'm mocking only myself).
One day a few weeks, when we were in Hokkaido, Japan, my family dropped me off at a ski-resort hotel so that I could take a bath.
To start, let me tell you that somehow, I've become a pretty tidy person. Since I hear some of you who have known me for a long time laughing, I will admit that has not always been the case. I'm naturally too...creative, let's say, to put much effort into being orderly. For much of my life, I was comfortable with a happy moonscape of discarded clothes and books (and possibly ancient snacks) across the floor of my room for weeks (*months*) at a time; a little bit of chaos just made everything feel lived-in, you know? I'd certainly clean when things looked dirty. And then I had a child, and one day I saw my precious infant, the star around which I orbited, lick the carpet that I couldn't remember when I had last vacuumed. I decided I could probably be tidier. All of this is to tell you that we don't wear shoes in the house, even in Texas, because I have grown to like being in charge of what is on my floors. So going shoeless indoors in Asia hasn't been any kind of shock for us--we often have flip-flops on outside (slippahs! as I've heard them called in Singapore), and it's habit to slip them off at the door.
Nonetheless, I didn't spend enough time in Japan to know if it's customary to take off shoes everywhere. We did eat in one restaurant where we left our shoes at the door, but when it's snowing heavily outside, it doesn't feel as natural, and it didn't become reflex to remove shoes in public places, by any means. So I entered the hotel where the special Japanese bath, or onsen, is, having spent a few hours skiing, and tromped across the hotel lobby in my ski stuff and snow boots, as you do, because generally I don't have to undress to enter a public space. I went to the check in desk and greeted them in my terrible guide-book Japanese, and the nice lady looked at me like I was dressed in roadkill. "Onsen?" I managed, and she gestured to an area right next to the door where I had come in, with a big comfy bench and space to replace gross outdoor snow boots with nice complimentary indoor slippers. Keep score for me, ok? Cultural FauxPas Involving Shoes - 1
I put my giant, snowy, twenty-year-old Neanderthal boots next to the cute tiny chic footwear left by other patrons and wondered what to to next. There was a big sign that said ONSEN hanging on the wall next to a vending machine, but everything else on the sign was in Japanese. So I went back to my friend, the horrified front desk clerk. She directed me back to the vending machine next to the sign the one with the selections that said clearly in English "Onsen ticket." I can forgive myself for overlooking that because I wasn't expecting to buy a ticket to a bath in a hotel from a vending machine, right? So I took my ticket from the vending machine back to the front desk lady, and she gave me two towels, and I wandered toward what I thought might be the onsen. It was an elevator. I had no choice; I went back to the front desk lady. I really should have gotten her name by now. She showed me the nice curtains, clearly visible from the front door, clearly labeled in English, that indicated the entrance to the onsen. Keep score for me again. Number of Times I Had To Bother The Front Desk Lady With Stupid Questions - 4. I went through the curtains, and then through another set of red curtains that indicated the area for Women.
Just inside the curtains was a set of shelves to leave your slippers. (Number of Times I've Changed Shoes In Two Minutes - 2) I'm not the kind of person to undertake a cultural experience without doing my homework, so I'd read on the internet all about what to do when you go to the onsen, and I knew that I should find a toilet, first thing, because it wouldn't be ok to take a bathroom break mid-onsening, or anything. Did I tell you that an onsen is a public bath? It's a big pool open to lots of people, but you just sit in it and chill, I read. So yeah, since there are other people around, I was definitely going to need to do my best to follow the rules as I understood them. With the help of a nice lady, I found the door to the toilet. Inside was another set of slippers, each embroidered with the word "toilet," so I slipped my stocking feet into them, did what I came to do, and spent five minutes deciphering how to flush, as usual. Then I opened the door and walked across the room to wash my hands--still wearing the toilet slippers that should have stayed in the toilet room, like they EMBROIDERED. Cultural FauxPas Involving Shoes - 2. I'm not sure how these scores add up, but I'm clearly losing.
After I returned the toilet shoes to the toilet room, possibly adding usage of colorful language to my list of rudenesses, it was time to get nekkid. Oh, I didn't tell you that part? So yes, an onsen is a public bath in which one of the rules is that it would be a huge problem to wear your bathing suit. It does make sense to me--cloth is much more likely to harbor contaminants than clean skin. And sometimes part of experiencing another culture is embracing their cultural standards. And any woman who has given birth in a hospital likely understands when I tell you that so many people have seen me without pants at this point that a few more shouldn't really be a problem.
Despite my rationalizations, I have a whole lifetime of Western cultural indoctrination to overcome, and I had to take a deep breath to prepare to take off all my clothes and hang out with strangers. It was -9 Celsius outside, and I'd been skiing, and I don't like to be cold, so I had to take off five layers of clothes. It took a while, perhaps because I had lots of clothes, and perhaps because I was a little nervous. I folded and stacked all my stuff in a locker, and set out, surprisingly without even slippers.
Before you get in the onsen, it's super important to be clean. I really like this rule. So the first thing after the steamed-up automatic glass door to the indoor part of the onsen was a wall of showers. Except they aren't showers, as I know them. Here's a picture of the Japanese shower at our cabin; the set up is the same.
You're supposed to sit on a stool or sit low on your heels and use the hand shower or fill the bowl to wash yourself from top to toe. The onsen did provide super nice shampoo and conditioner and body soap. And I didn't really know how I was supposed to wash, like a Japanese person, because none of my research had told me, because who would think you have to tell someone how to wash themselves? So I washed, pretty much like I always do except not standing up, which is just as odd as you'd think. I got pretty chilly, because I was in was a giant tile room with a door to the outside, and then got into the big indoor pool.
The pool was about the length of a school bus, and I was surprised as I stepped in to find that the water only came up to my knees. It was otherwise just pretty much a regular pool, and I sat down on the bottom so that the water covered my shoulders. It was perfectly warm, and nice, and empty of people, but nothing to write about, honestly. I saw two ladies come in through the outer door with snow in their hair (yes, they were nude. Just assume that clothes don't exist from here on out.), and I decided it was time for the part that I had come to try.
I read a few years ago that Sean Connery liked to take "Scottish showers"--I don't remember exactly, but I think it involved turning the water all the way to cold at the end of your shower. I tried that and found it every bit as loathsome as you might expect. And I've tried outdoor heated pools in the cold before and had a great time, but I had great company, which always makes a difference. I walked through two sets of doors to the outdoor pool, and the breath of the below-freezing air on my damp skin was a shock, to be sure. But I quickly found a spot to sit in the knee-depth outdoor pool, and it was like I had entered another world.
Of course the pool is man-made, but it was easy enough to forget that part, sitting there. The bottom of the pool was covered in naturally smooth flag stones, and the wall of the hotel was covered with black volcanic stones, nestled as if they had fallen there naturally, draped with snow near the top, gilded with a scrim of ice at the bottom where the heat of the water melted the snow and the cold of the air froze it again. A little wall of rough-hewn, fresh-smelling planks defined the outer wall of the pool, and behind them a guard of tall pines wore heavy rounded coats of snow. Steam rose from the pool, and fat snowflakes disappeared into the water, leaving small rings on the surface. Had it not been snowing so heavily, I think I would have seen the mountain beyond the trees. It was late afternoon, and the cloudy sky was losing light, and the only sounds were the gurgle of the little spring coming from the rocks and the hiss of the snowflakes as they landed on my hot shoulders.
I sat in that pool for a long time. When I reached up to run a hand through my hair, I was surprised to find it stiff with ice and snow. Other women came and went, and I took a break at one point to get a drink of water from the locker room, because, surprisingly, I had gotten too hot. I stretched in the pool, once I saw others doing it, feeling the heat of the water loosening knots in my muscles. I imagined I felt the minerals of the water healing my hands that had become chapped from just a week of winter, and I felt the steam soothing my frozen nose and throat. I wasn't fighting the cold, because I was in it, but it wasn't fighting me, either, for the first time.
So this is the story of the best bath I ever had. It's the story of being a bumbling idiot and knowing it and not running away. It's the story of understanding, a little better, why a group of people does things in a different way and letting the common joys of of our shared humanity make your soul hum a bit. It's a story without pictures that nonetheless stands as clearly in my memory as anything I can see.
You are in luck, friends, as I'm a walking mishap, and this is the beginning of a moderately entertaining story that involves me making all the mistakes. It's also the story of one of the most amazing things I've ever done, so, like the ancient Greeks used to do, I ask you to hear me truly (and forgive my ignorance, knowing that I'm mocking only myself).
One day a few weeks, when we were in Hokkaido, Japan, my family dropped me off at a ski-resort hotel so that I could take a bath.
To start, let me tell you that somehow, I've become a pretty tidy person. Since I hear some of you who have known me for a long time laughing, I will admit that has not always been the case. I'm naturally too...creative, let's say, to put much effort into being orderly. For much of my life, I was comfortable with a happy moonscape of discarded clothes and books (and possibly ancient snacks) across the floor of my room for weeks (*months*) at a time; a little bit of chaos just made everything feel lived-in, you know? I'd certainly clean when things looked dirty. And then I had a child, and one day I saw my precious infant, the star around which I orbited, lick the carpet that I couldn't remember when I had last vacuumed. I decided I could probably be tidier. All of this is to tell you that we don't wear shoes in the house, even in Texas, because I have grown to like being in charge of what is on my floors. So going shoeless indoors in Asia hasn't been any kind of shock for us--we often have flip-flops on outside (slippahs! as I've heard them called in Singapore), and it's habit to slip them off at the door.
Nonetheless, I didn't spend enough time in Japan to know if it's customary to take off shoes everywhere. We did eat in one restaurant where we left our shoes at the door, but when it's snowing heavily outside, it doesn't feel as natural, and it didn't become reflex to remove shoes in public places, by any means. So I entered the hotel where the special Japanese bath, or onsen, is, having spent a few hours skiing, and tromped across the hotel lobby in my ski stuff and snow boots, as you do, because generally I don't have to undress to enter a public space. I went to the check in desk and greeted them in my terrible guide-book Japanese, and the nice lady looked at me like I was dressed in roadkill. "Onsen?" I managed, and she gestured to an area right next to the door where I had come in, with a big comfy bench and space to replace gross outdoor snow boots with nice complimentary indoor slippers. Keep score for me, ok? Cultural FauxPas Involving Shoes - 1
I put my giant, snowy, twenty-year-old Neanderthal boots next to the cute tiny chic footwear left by other patrons and wondered what to to next. There was a big sign that said ONSEN hanging on the wall next to a vending machine, but everything else on the sign was in Japanese. So I went back to my friend, the horrified front desk clerk. She directed me back to the vending machine next to the sign the one with the selections that said clearly in English "Onsen ticket." I can forgive myself for overlooking that because I wasn't expecting to buy a ticket to a bath in a hotel from a vending machine, right? So I took my ticket from the vending machine back to the front desk lady, and she gave me two towels, and I wandered toward what I thought might be the onsen. It was an elevator. I had no choice; I went back to the front desk lady. I really should have gotten her name by now. She showed me the nice curtains, clearly visible from the front door, clearly labeled in English, that indicated the entrance to the onsen. Keep score for me again. Number of Times I Had To Bother The Front Desk Lady With Stupid Questions - 4. I went through the curtains, and then through another set of red curtains that indicated the area for Women.
 |
| The only picture you're going to get. |
Just inside the curtains was a set of shelves to leave your slippers. (Number of Times I've Changed Shoes In Two Minutes - 2) I'm not the kind of person to undertake a cultural experience without doing my homework, so I'd read on the internet all about what to do when you go to the onsen, and I knew that I should find a toilet, first thing, because it wouldn't be ok to take a bathroom break mid-onsening, or anything. Did I tell you that an onsen is a public bath? It's a big pool open to lots of people, but you just sit in it and chill, I read. So yeah, since there are other people around, I was definitely going to need to do my best to follow the rules as I understood them. With the help of a nice lady, I found the door to the toilet. Inside was another set of slippers, each embroidered with the word "toilet," so I slipped my stocking feet into them, did what I came to do, and spent five minutes deciphering how to flush, as usual. Then I opened the door and walked across the room to wash my hands--still wearing the toilet slippers that should have stayed in the toilet room, like they EMBROIDERED. Cultural FauxPas Involving Shoes - 2. I'm not sure how these scores add up, but I'm clearly losing.
After I returned the toilet shoes to the toilet room, possibly adding usage of colorful language to my list of rudenesses, it was time to get nekkid. Oh, I didn't tell you that part? So yes, an onsen is a public bath in which one of the rules is that it would be a huge problem to wear your bathing suit. It does make sense to me--cloth is much more likely to harbor contaminants than clean skin. And sometimes part of experiencing another culture is embracing their cultural standards. And any woman who has given birth in a hospital likely understands when I tell you that so many people have seen me without pants at this point that a few more shouldn't really be a problem.
Despite my rationalizations, I have a whole lifetime of Western cultural indoctrination to overcome, and I had to take a deep breath to prepare to take off all my clothes and hang out with strangers. It was -9 Celsius outside, and I'd been skiing, and I don't like to be cold, so I had to take off five layers of clothes. It took a while, perhaps because I had lots of clothes, and perhaps because I was a little nervous. I folded and stacked all my stuff in a locker, and set out, surprisingly without even slippers.
Before you get in the onsen, it's super important to be clean. I really like this rule. So the first thing after the steamed-up automatic glass door to the indoor part of the onsen was a wall of showers. Except they aren't showers, as I know them. Here's a picture of the Japanese shower at our cabin; the set up is the same.
 |
| Just one more. |
You're supposed to sit on a stool or sit low on your heels and use the hand shower or fill the bowl to wash yourself from top to toe. The onsen did provide super nice shampoo and conditioner and body soap. And I didn't really know how I was supposed to wash, like a Japanese person, because none of my research had told me, because who would think you have to tell someone how to wash themselves? So I washed, pretty much like I always do except not standing up, which is just as odd as you'd think. I got pretty chilly, because I was in was a giant tile room with a door to the outside, and then got into the big indoor pool.
The pool was about the length of a school bus, and I was surprised as I stepped in to find that the water only came up to my knees. It was otherwise just pretty much a regular pool, and I sat down on the bottom so that the water covered my shoulders. It was perfectly warm, and nice, and empty of people, but nothing to write about, honestly. I saw two ladies come in through the outer door with snow in their hair (yes, they were nude. Just assume that clothes don't exist from here on out.), and I decided it was time for the part that I had come to try.
I read a few years ago that Sean Connery liked to take "Scottish showers"--I don't remember exactly, but I think it involved turning the water all the way to cold at the end of your shower. I tried that and found it every bit as loathsome as you might expect. And I've tried outdoor heated pools in the cold before and had a great time, but I had great company, which always makes a difference. I walked through two sets of doors to the outdoor pool, and the breath of the below-freezing air on my damp skin was a shock, to be sure. But I quickly found a spot to sit in the knee-depth outdoor pool, and it was like I had entered another world.
Of course the pool is man-made, but it was easy enough to forget that part, sitting there. The bottom of the pool was covered in naturally smooth flag stones, and the wall of the hotel was covered with black volcanic stones, nestled as if they had fallen there naturally, draped with snow near the top, gilded with a scrim of ice at the bottom where the heat of the water melted the snow and the cold of the air froze it again. A little wall of rough-hewn, fresh-smelling planks defined the outer wall of the pool, and behind them a guard of tall pines wore heavy rounded coats of snow. Steam rose from the pool, and fat snowflakes disappeared into the water, leaving small rings on the surface. Had it not been snowing so heavily, I think I would have seen the mountain beyond the trees. It was late afternoon, and the cloudy sky was losing light, and the only sounds were the gurgle of the little spring coming from the rocks and the hiss of the snowflakes as they landed on my hot shoulders.
I sat in that pool for a long time. When I reached up to run a hand through my hair, I was surprised to find it stiff with ice and snow. Other women came and went, and I took a break at one point to get a drink of water from the locker room, because, surprisingly, I had gotten too hot. I stretched in the pool, once I saw others doing it, feeling the heat of the water loosening knots in my muscles. I imagined I felt the minerals of the water healing my hands that had become chapped from just a week of winter, and I felt the steam soothing my frozen nose and throat. I wasn't fighting the cold, because I was in it, but it wasn't fighting me, either, for the first time.
So this is the story of the best bath I ever had. It's the story of being a bumbling idiot and knowing it and not running away. It's the story of understanding, a little better, why a group of people does things in a different way and letting the common joys of of our shared humanity make your soul hum a bit. It's a story without pictures that nonetheless stands as clearly in my memory as anything I can see.
This was wonderful. Thank you for sharing this story with us.
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