Culture Shock: My First Onsen Experience In Japan
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“When doing the Japanese onsen you’ll bring a small and big towel to the locker room where you can leave the big towel in a locker or basket. The baths are separated by male and female.
You’ll then remove your clothes and bring your small towel with you to the public bathing area to wash with soap, shampoo, and conditioner. You’ll be sharing the mineral waters with other people, so please make sure to do this.
The onsen isn’t for cleaning yourself, it’s for relaxation. Also, don’t bring the small towel you used to wash into the public baths.”
Naked. That’s the only part of my local Japan guide Moriwaki Michiko’s onsen explanation that I catch. I would have to be sans clothes…with strangers.
What if people stared? What if I brought the wrong towel or got naked at the wrong time? My palms started to sweat.
Onsens are an important part of Japanese culture.
They are geothermally-heated public baths — although you don’t actually wash in the baths, but before you enter them — heated to at least 25°C / 77°F. They can be located either indoors or outdoors and, by definition, must contain at least one of 19 possible elements, including radon, gypsum and metabolic acid. There are over 3,000 of these public baths in Japan.
While in my home of Brooklyn, New York, I love flaunting my glittery body piercings and body mural dedicated to mother nature with tattoos of birds on my back, flowers on my feet and vines climbing up my left side, now I was scared the colors and shimmer would draw attention. Then I remembered something that might give me an excuse to back out of the onsen.
“Hey Moriwaki, aren’t people with tattoos not allowed in the onsen?”
She smiles. “While traditionally Japanese people associate tattoos with the mafia, because you’re staying at a ryokan and using their onsen and they know you’re not in the mafia it’s okay.”
Damn. I mean, excellent!
The truth was, while my prudeness was making me terrified of using the onsen, I would kick myself later on if I didn’t try it.
hide my parts reap the benefits of the mineral waters. A man-made waterfall gushed from above, spraying hot healing waters over my head, saturating my hair and forcing me to close my eyes in delight. I soon forgot I was even naked in public. Well, sort of.
Suddenly, I noticed a woman coming in from outdoors. I peaked outside the floor-to-ceiling windows — shielded from the outside world from the structure of the building — and spied the most serene setting, like something from a painting. A stone hot spring dug into the ground and surrounded by trees and small stones sat in the open air. At the foothills of the mountains, calmed by the sound of bubbling hot water and the scent of woodland, heated liquid and cooler air touching my skin at once, I was having a truly multi-sensory experience. I couldn’t think of anywhere else I would rather be naked.
Photo courtesy of GollyGForce
A History Of The Onsen
Anyone who’s ever enjoyed Japan tourism and visited the country knows the culture is full of superstition and folklore. When I asked Moriwaki how the local love of hot springs originated in Japan, she smirked, telling me there were many legends. The most popular, as she explains it, is the story of a Buddhist monk — some people also believe it was hunters — stumbling upon an area full of wounded animals bathing in the hot springs thousands of years ago. When the animals emerged, he noticed they were completely healed. The monk realized these hot springs were special and that people should reap the rewards of their mineral-filled waters. What animal the story features differs depending on what region you’re in. In Kinosaki — the popular hot springs resort area I was currently heading to — they believe it was white storks, an animal endangered and prized in Japan. To thank the animal for founding the hot springs culture of the town, there are many white stork statues littered around Kinosaki. After doing some of my own research, I found onsens were popularized by Buddhist monks who began using public baths in their rituals to wash away their sins, as well as samurai who used the waters to heal their battle wounds. According to the lifestyle blog Steamtherapy (http://blog.mrsteam.com/bid/319337/Steam-Bathing-History-The-Onsen-and-Sento-of-Japan), it was in the Edo Period that common people began using onsen, and in the 1500s Christian Missionaries tried hard to ban the practice, as back then public bathing was typically not separated by gender. While they failed to stop the cultural practice, their efforts did lead to the option of separate male and female onsen. As far as being naked with people other than the person your sleeping with, something many Westerns like myself may find strange, in Japanese culture being naked together helps to create a kind of equality with them, break barriers and form organic relationships in a relaxing atmosphere.Photo courtesy of Marc Veraart