The Public Baths

are not like those in ancient Rome, but that's what I kept thinking when I visited them with my host mother last night. I kept expecting there to be carved stone reliefs and tiled mosaics depicting sexual acts above the clothes cubbies. There were, of course, none.

The baths weren't very crowded, likely due to the downpour of rain. Upon entering, you place your shoes in a cubby on either the male or female side of the wall. The doors are marked with the characters for "male" and "female", so as long as you have a very basic kanji knowledge, you're fine. =) And after you walk in the door, you hand your 1oo yen to the woman at the desk, and I'm sure she'd let you know if you were being an ignorant foreigner and direct you to the right side.

The first room is a changing room with what looked like tatami flooring. I was a little surprise by this, since I'd heard you're not supposed to get tatami too wet, but I guess it's okay. There were benches and numerous cubbies with plastic baskets to store your clothes, purse, etc. If you wanted, you could pay to use a locked cubby, but I didn't see anyone bothering with them. Once you're sufficiently naked, you can take your various soaps, wash cloth, and requisite plastic tub into the bath room. (Between the changing room and the bath room there is another narrow room with sinks--I'm not sure what goes on here, as we didn't use it.)

Upon entering the bath, you sit yourself on a plastic stool facing the wall and use the various faucets to wash, lather, rinse, etc., yourself. There are three faucets--one hot water, one cold water, and one hot water shower. This is where your plastic tub becomes a necessity: although you could wash yourself entirely under the shower, the usual way to clean yourself is by filling your tub with water and dousing yourself with it. You can use the tub to wet or rinse out your wash cloth (these are much longer than American wash cloths, and are therefore much easier to use in scrubbing your back), or to splash water on your face, etc. I found the shower very useful in rinsing my hair, though--thus far I've found it rather difficult to get all the suds out with bucketfuls of water.

Once you're sufficiently clean--no suds!--you can enter the ofuro proper. This is essentially a very large American-style hot tub, but without all that noxious chlorine. If you're used to those, the temperature is perfect--nice and steamy, just enough to make your toes tingle. You can soak there as long as you like, though we didn't stay more than five minutes.

Following your happy soak, you shower once again in one of the stalls against the wall. I'm not entirely sure why, but it was nice and warm, so I wasn't about to complain. Then we returned to the changing room, where we dried ourselves, redressed, and packed up our things.

All in all, a very relaxing experience, if you can get past the whole "I'm a foreigner standing naked in a room of other naked women" thing. I found that taking off my glasses made the process much easier.


Excelsior!