You’ll never relax harder than you do in an onsen (温泉), the natural hot springs dotting every nook and cranny of Japan. As you zen yourself out in the heated spring water, the events of your life float around you like all the errant bits of the dead skin and other particles. Several hundred feet below, framed by dark mountains in the background, the lights of a town dot the valley floor. It’s quite literally this idyllic, and in this tranquility, stress is usually barred from entering. Even the imminent implosion of a self-destructive life can’t enter this space.
Just avoid accidentally looking someone in the eye for a moment too long. Certainly avoid having awkward conversations with the father of one your students just after he’s made eye contact with you. His 5-year-old son, your student, stands there too, naked, staring at your junk. Everyone’s naked, chilling and glancing over at your junk. In a nutshell, or maybe in an onigiri (お握り), or rice ball, that’s what the Japanese onsen is like.
I’d been in country at least a couple of months before I eventually made the trek to my first onsen. I peddled up a steep, never ending road, with no real destination in mind, other than exploration. Every time I looked up from the ground, rivers of sweat would stream into my eyes and mouth. Looking down, I watched the sweat hit the pavement next to the front wheel of the old, eight-ton mountain bike I borrowed from a friend.
The office staff suggested I try an onsen, and since I’d spent the previous several iterations of “weekend” time binging on Lost, I decided to go out and experience the local culture by getting naked with a bunch of other men (and kids as I would come to learn).
Of course, going to one of the more accessible onsens wasn’t enough. Instead, I biked up the foot of the mountains on backside of town. When I finally arrived, a sweaty mess, I had no idea what to do. I stood outside the entrance for several minutes, wondering if this was indeed where you were supposed to enter. Maybe this wasn’t the entrance to the onsen at all. I barely understood Japanese; it could’ve been a restaurant or private club.
I nonchalantly checked my phone, until I noticed a family going in. Almost as an afterthought, the father turned around and held the door open for me, gesturing for me to follow. Once inside he showed me how to buy a ticket and a vanity towel (you are not allowed to wear clothes but you can bring large, wash-cloth like towels in with you). Score one for the friendly locals. I followed “dad” into men’s section and sat down on a bench. I pretended to ruffle through my bag, still not knowing what to do. There were naked men and children (both sexes) milling about, some staring at me.
Out of the blue, a man somewhere between the age of 30–50 tapped me on the shoulder and asked with a big smile, “You… a… first time?”
It obviously was. He sat down next to me and explained in choppy but easily understood English what to do. After he was certain I was okay, he fucked off.
Finally getting into the onsen, I saw a room full of Japanese style showers lined up in rows along one wall. Once again, I was lost. Was I supposed to shower before or after relaxing in the Onsen? How was I supposed to sit? Was there a process?
My English-speaking friend appeared again out of no-where, but this time he was different. I was different. We were butt-naked and staring at eachother. He gestured to the tattoo on my back and said with a knowing smile, “Ah, you have tattoo.”
I smiled back at him, nodding my head in tacit understanding.
“How you like my tattoos?” he said nodding.
He didn’t have just one tattoo. He was covered in them and they were very specific kinds of tattoos. His gold tooth even made more sense; he was part of the Yakuza, or organized crime.
We both laughed at his implied joke.
Yet, despite my apprehension about this experience and about him (not to mention the stares a gaijin, slang for “foreigner”, and a yakuza were garnering in the middle of an onsen) he managed to coach me through my first onsen experience. Once we made it out of the showering area and into the hot pools, I never saw that guy again.
Like the infamous Japanese ninja, that motherfucker disappeared in a puff of smoke… Or, steam, rather.
Over the several years I lived in Japan, onsens became normal. Even getting kicked out of one because of my tattoos, didn’t faze me. There were plenty of onsens that didn’t enforce the “no tattoo” policy. I eventually learned that you could bring alcohol into most of them (you can bring alcohol almost anywhere in Japan, even walking down the street). But, no matter how familiar I became with onsens, nor how usual my presence at the local ones became (as one of the few foreign teachers in town, people recognized me after a few years), onsens never quite lost their inherent alienness.
Once, while relaxing in one of my favorites in Nagano city, I noticed a middle-age man staring at me. I tried to ignore him but after several minutes, it was difficult to ignore both his open stare and his gesture. He’d been watching me for several minutes while stroking his penis. To my horror, I noticed he was getting hard.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, and, yes, I did walk away but not before I made sure he was actually stroking himself. So, I stared back at him, until the eye contact became unbearable. I indicated with my hand that he had a small penis and that I was disappointed.
Apparently, that wasn’t the response he was looking for. He grunted no small amount of disgust under his breath, disappearing into the steam.
There was another time I was getting dressed in the locker room, when an American friend of mine pointed out that I had a “fan”. Not having my glasses on, I couldn’t see very well, so I ignored him and my surreptitious fan. Afterwards, sitting in the common area and waiting for our girlfriends, glasses on, my friend again pointed out my fan. She wasn’t a small child but a 12-year-old girl.
No dear readers, she shouldn’t have been in there. There’s posted no age limit for opposite sexed children being in one side of the onsen or the other, but there’s an unspoken rule that you don’t bring boys and girls passed 8 or 9 in the side opposite their sex.
Much later on in my exile in Japan, my neighbor, a fellow ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) and I were hanging out in the local onsen when our peace and quiet was interrupted by two little girls from one of the local elementary schools. They started splashing us, so we half-heartedly engaged them in their water battle, which they took as an invitation.
Annoyed, I looked around for their father to regulate the situation. By this point, I was completely comfortable with the onsen experience, but still didn’t want two naked, elementary school girls hanging around us. Surely, you understand my discomfort.
“You see their father?” I asked my neighbor.
“No, but I recognize that guy over there. He’s the grandfather.”
I looked at the older gentleman who was smiling at us. I knew what that smile meant, his grandkids were now our problem. He nodded at us and fucked off to a quieter section of the onsen, but not before he encouraged his granddaughters to play nicely with their teachers.
I swear I could hear laughter as he walked away.
Asshole.
“In any other context,” I said looking at my neighbor, “this would be beyond acceptable.”
“Indeed.”
After managing to sneak into the showering area without our “new friends” trying to follow us, we thought we were in the clear. My neighbor looked at me and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here before they find us.”
“Agreed.”
We’d spoken too soon.
The subtle arts of ninjitsu must be genetic amongst the Japanese because like my disappearing yakuza friend and clandestine masturbator, the two little girls appeared out of nowhere, in puffs of steam, spraying us with unused shower hoses.
“Where the fuck is their fucking grandfather?” Yes, many of us ALTs had horrible potty-mouths while living abroad in Japan. Especially in rural areas, the chances of someone understanding natural English was slim to none.
“I don’t know but we really gotta get outta here,” said my exasperated neighbor.
And just like that, Grandpa’s head popped up from the other row of showers, admonishing his granddaughters to leave the poor teachers in peace.
Later on, in the common room, trying to enjoy a beer, the kids came up to us laughing their heads off, “Sank you for playing with us! Let’s play again!”
That was the last time I went to that onsen…
As a final thought, I don’t tell these stories to shock you or describe how strange things might seem to Westerners in Japan, because trust me, cultures are mutually strange to any outsider and his/her host country. I intend these stories as an honest recounting of my experiences as an ignorant stranger in my adopted country.
Being a foreigner, who didn’t understand the native culture of Japan, I learned to keep eyes and ears open, but my opinionated mouth shut. Of course, onsens are strange at first but I grew to understand them because I was open to experience of them. And, I reserved judgment until I had a better understanding of what was going on around me.
Still, some things just stand out, and as a Japanese friend later pointed out, old men in Japan just don’t give a fuck. Sometimes it’s better to just walk away… Or, disappear into the steam.