My first visit to an onsen

Sorry for having been gone for so long. In any case, I'm back, thanks to you, Dr. K... Well, I feel like talking about my first visit to an onsen. What's an onsen, you ask?

An onsen is a hot spring. There is actually one right here in little ol' Takachiho, believe it or not, and it's not too far from the ghetto where we live, as least by car (it's about a 30-minute walk). (More on the ghetto in another post...) Yeah, so it turns out our first night here there was no hot water in the apartment, since that little item did not get taken care of before our arrival. So the suggestion was made that we go to the onsen. So off we went. Courtney's supervisor took us there and got us started, but he then went home (and said he'd pick us up about an hour later).

What I mean by getting us started is: he showed us the ticket machine and helped us buy our ticket, for 500 yen (about USD 4.35), and then showed us which entrance was for the women and which one was for the men. And off he went. [But let me back-track a bit here. From what I remember, that onsen was the first place in Japan where I had to take my shoes off before entering. That was my little introduction to a major piece of Japanese culture. (I'll go into that in another post. There really is a lot to write about, but I can't do it all at once!)]

Okay, so there I stood, in front of the entrance to the men's part of the onsen, not really knowing what was in store for me. It sure would have been cooler/easier had Courtney's supervisor gone with me to show me the ropes! But no, I was all alone to figure things out. So in I went, sliding the door open to see what I was in for. The first thing I saw was a changing area. In other words, you get naked, put your clothes in a basket in a cubbyhole, and move on to the "onsen" part of the onsen. Problem was, there was almost no one around and I had no clue through which door to go since everything was marked in Japanese of course! I really had no clue if that door over there was just a door to a closet or a door to a bathroom. And what was behind that door there? Hmmm... See, I didn't want to do anything wrong, not so much because I might have embarrassed myself, nope, but rather, because I was a bit afraid of offending someone culturally-wise, by doing the wrong thing.

Yeah, so there I was, naked except for the little towel I brought along, minding my own business, trying to act like I knew what was going on but really having no clue what to do next. Finally, an old(er) man came in and changed (i.e., undressed). So I stalled some more and got ready to follow him. But by that time I figured out that the door he was heading to was the bathroom. Hmmm. Not good. More stalling time. Then, someone opened a different door and came out. I quickly poked my head in to see what there was to see and I could tell that that it was through that door that I had to go! At last, I knew what direction to go in. But, what then???

Finally, someone came along and went it through that door so I went in with him. I probably should have had the balls to just go for it, but I felt really uncomfortable, as you can imagine. Anyway, the first thing this guy does is head for a pool of water just next to the entrance. He then puts his towel down in a dry place and grabs a bucket and dips it in the water. And then he squats down in this, well, Japanese way, if you know what I mean, and pours the water all over himself. He poured about three buckets of water all over himself and moved on. So guess what I did? I did exactly what he did, including the ridiculous(?) little squat (as if I were a naked catcher with invisible knee-savers, keeping my back as straight as can be!) and poured the water over myself... While doing so, I scoped out what there was in the "room." To the right, I noticed the "showers." So off I went in that direction.

I found myself a little cubbyhole semi-removed from everyone else, although that was rather easy, since there were probably about 30 cubbyholes but only maybe 5 were occupied. While walking past the other guys I tried my best to figure out the washing procedure. In any case, the first thing you do is sit down on this funny little stool. And then you have your choice of filling a bucket with water and dousing yourself some more or turning the shower on and getting yourself wet that way. And then you soap up and clean yourself off.

The soap is provided in two forms: a bar of soap (I found that out later!) and two dispensers. But I was so not sure of what was going on that I didn't notice the bar of soap that was there. Or maybe it wasn't. So I dispensed some of the soap in the first bottle onto my towel and lathered up. All the while I'm looking over my shoulder trying to check out how some of the other guys are doing it and wondering why they all had such an awesome lather going and why mine sucked! Anyway, eventually I moved on the the shampooing part of my sit-down shower. And just as I started to rub the shampoo into my hair, I noticed that the two dispensers (one with soap, the other with shampoo) were actually labeled in katakana, one of the three "alphabets" used in Japanese.

So I decided to take a stab at reading them. (I doubt if you can remember what it's like when you first started to read, but if you look at the Y.A.M.A. up top, for example, and take about 10 seconds instead of about 1/2 of a second to figure out that those four letters together spell "Yama," well, that's how dumb I felt (and still do!) reading those letters on the bottles. Anyway, lo and behold here's basically what I read on the first bottle: (no, not "Rat Poison" and no, not "Bleach"): S-h-a-m-p-o-o. And here's what I read on the other bottle: B-o-d-y W-a-s-h. Guess which one I was using on my hair! Yes, the body wash! Which means I washed my body with shampoo... How lovely! Do you think anyone else noticed? So that was certainly worth a good laugh.

The rest of the time, the actual sitting in the hot water time, wasn't as exciting, to tell you the truth. But yeah, the procedure is to first cleanse your body, and then go into the water. At least I didn't screw that part up. I had about 30 minutes left to sit in various pools of water at various temperatures and then I exited. I wasn't really sure if there was a set procedure for leaving, though. Do you take another shower? Do you just take a shower without the soap? Do you dunk more water on your head? I decided to go in reverse and dunk more water over my head at the location next to the door. And that's exactly what I did. This time with just a half-squat...