Final Night in Japan: Public Bathhouse (Sento)

It's almost 11pm on a Friday night here, and it's exactly one month since I left Japan. To mark this important date, and also sort of because I have nothing better to do this evening, I'm going to treat you all to a detailed account of what I did on my final night in Japan. I had a bath.

Now of course, in Japan, a bath is not just a bath. Bathing is a highly ritualized process in Japanese culture, and for this reason public bathhouses (sento) and hot springs (onsen) are as common as supermarkets. Like, it's completely normal for someone to say, 'I'm just popping off to the bathhouse, be back in a bit.' There is also a special etiquette surrounding baths in Japan, for example, while we use baths for cleaning ourselves in the west, in Japan you must scrub yourself practically raw before entering the bath, as the water needs to stay pure for all the patrons to soak in it. Another rule that is often enforced is no tattoos allowed, in order to keep the yakuza out.

I had managed to avoid going to a bathhouse throughout my stay in Japan, despite being told by many Japanese friends that it was an awesome experience and I should totally try it. But I was apprehensive about two things. First, the whole being-naked-in-public thing. And second (any relatives who may be reading this, promise not to tell Nana), I have a small tattoo. Ironically, of a Japanese peace crane. So it's probably unlikely that I would be mistaken for a participant in the Japanese criminal underworld. However, I still had this image of myself being kicked out of the bathhouse immediately, without being given the chance to retrieve my clothes, and then I would have to take the train home naked, all the while apologising to fellow passengers for displaying my tattoo in public.

Then, on our last night in Japan, our friend messaged us with the plan. A group of us were going to the PL Fireworks display near Tondabayashi - one of the largest fireworks shows in the world - and then we would visit a local sento, before going back to his house for the night. I had no escape. I was certain that my last night in Japan would be tainted by the embarrassment of being banished from a bathhouse.

We watched the fireworks display from a field in the middle of the countryside on the outskirts of Osaka, surrounded by peach trees and screeching cicadas. Halfway through the fireworks, it began pouring with rain, a freak summer storm. "Oh," I said brightly, as we all got drenched, "we won't be needing that bath!" Then the rain stopped, the cicadas resumed chirping conspiratorially, and I resigned myself to the fact that, like it or not, I was going to the bathhouse.

The sento was more like a spa resort than how I had imagined a public bathhouse to be (I was picturing something akin to a murky school swimming pool). It was also surprisingly busy for 11pm at night, and there were lots of families there, including little children. We were given a special bracelet with a locker key, and barcode on it which we could use to pay for things at the gift shop, juice bar and dining area, and charge to our account. We were also given a bag containing pyjamas, a large towel, and a facecloth. Then we split off into the girls and boys changing rooms.

One of my Japanese teachers had once told us that the great thing about Japanese sento and onsen was that, in such a hierarchical society, it was a place where everyone was equal, the rationale being that everyone is the same when they are naked. As a blonde, pale foreigner, I am not so sure about this theory. I certainly felt quite conspicuous. For obvious reasons there won't be any photos in this post, but I have put together an illustration to represent my bathhouse experience.

The only blonde in the bathhouse...

What happens is you go into the changing rooms, put your clothes and towel in your assigned locker, and then take your facecloth into the shower area with you. I sneakily used my facecloth to cover my tattoo the whole time, but I've gotta say, I would have preferred to be able to use it to cover other, ahem, parts... anyway. You then sit down at the little showers, which are set up in a row, and use the shampoo, soap and face wash provided to thoroughly clean yourself. After doing that, you're free to either soak in the baths and hot pools, or put your pyjamas on and roam around the bathhouse, which often have facilities other than just the baths themselves. The one we were at had a sauna area, so we decided to meet up with the boys in there.

The sauna area was amazing. It was full of different rooms ranging in temperature from about 50 to 80 degrees, and each room had different pebbles, rocks and minerals that you lay down on. There were also attendants with big leafy fans who would walk around the rooms and fan you if you needed it. It was clearly meant to be a place of silent meditation, but being the responsible young adults we are, we all kept getting the giggles and behaving inappropriately.

After a while we decided to go back into the girls/boys separate areas, and have a soak in the range of indoor and outdoor baths. To do this meant going through the lengthy showering procedure again, but funnily enough, by then I was strangely used to parading around the place in the nude. I got complacent. I confidently entered one of the baths, feeling quite satisfied with myself. Suddenly, a fully-clothed bathroom attendant came over to me, looking disapproving. Oh my god. The tattoo. It was all over.

"Please excuse me, but could you possibly tie your hair up while you are in the bath, miss?"
She smiled sweetly, and handed me a hair tie. I apologised, tied my hair up, and slid guiltily back under the water, like a slippery fish who had narrowly avoided being caught...

Just after midnight, we got out of the baths, got dressed, and went out into the dining area, where the Olympics was being shown on large screens. We drank bottled milk - in Japan it's traditional to drink milk after using the baths - and watched Japan win a gold medal in the gymnastics, staying until the sento closed at 1.30am. We were all in high spirits afterwards, and felt exceptionally clean, warm and relaxed. I felt like my muscles had been restored to their prime condition, and were ready for lugging suitcases all the way to the airport the next day. I would recommend it to anyone.

So, there you have it. I spent most of my last night in Japan in a bath. No regrets.

Juso, Osaka

Juso is an old area of Osaka that fascinates me. On train trips along the Hankyu line from Kandai to Umeda, there comes a point where the scenery fades from clean-cut apartments and convenience stores, turning into run-down restaurants, pachinko parlours and shady buildings with photos of scantily clad girls on the windows. This is Juso; residential area by day, red light district by night.

'Juso Friendly Street'

Across the road from Juso Station is the optimistically named shopping arcade, Juso Friendly Street, which contains all sorts of quirky little retailers. Many are traditional, selling sake, kimono, fabrics and Japanese snacks. Some are musty second hand shops, with an assortment of cheap toys, books, furniture, and knick knacks nobody would ever want or need. There are also fresh foods out on display, providing the street with a particularly pungent aroma - fish, meat, even live crabs. The arcade is slow paced and grey - quite like the customers who seem to frequent it. The older generation leisurely ride their bikes through Juso Friendly Street, stopping abruptly outside shops to have a loud conversation (in thick Osaka dialect, of course) with the owners.

Inside the arcade

Traditional Japanese store

Live crabs sitting outside in a wrapped bowl

This is all fairly tame. But parallel to 'Friendly Street' is another Juso landmark - Sakaemachi, home to all creatures of the night, and some of the best Engrish I have seen in Japan yet. 'Sakaemachi' literally means 'prosperous town'... and considering sex is Japan's second largest industry, I suppose that could be considered an appropriate description. Sakaemachi is so open and in-your-face it's surprising, considering prostitution is technically illegal in Japan. But the red light districts such as Juso find all sorts of ways to get around these laws and disguise their trade, operating under an 'everything but' facade. A common sight in these kinds of sleazy places are the innocently named 'annai-jo', or 'information centres', which act as a sort of directory for adult services in the area.

Sakaemachi, Juso's red light district

Obligatory host club

Is not the lover of the limit looked for by bunny at night?

Medica Room... not even sure what the imagery is meant to represent here.

Exit Sakaemachi, head back towards Juso Station, and follow the glowing orange, bespectacled Astro Boy lookalike lamps through a network of narrow alleyways tucked in under the train tracks. This is where you find wall-to-wall restaurants, differentiated only by the writing on the lanterns hanging outside. As you walk down these alleys in single file, peek through the slatted curtains to see people slurping up udon noodles at any time of day. It was ominously dark and thundery as we walked around this area, which made the warm golden lanterns and the smell of noodle soup coming from either side of the street even more inviting. Walking around in the near-darkness was a surreal experience. Barely a word of English is to be found here, making it one of those rare places where you actually feel immersed in the 'real' Japan.

Follow the Astro Boy

Restaurant alleyways... I spy cheap beer and kushi katsu.

Juso-ya, or Juso house (I think this sells noodles?)

Astro Boy watches over the streets

Walking around Juso is like stepping into another place and time. For all those people who have lived in Juso their whole lives, I don't think anything has ever changed - and, again demonstrating that stubborn Osakan way of doing things, it probably never will.

Gion Matsuri 2012

It seems like the second we got back from Korea, summer decided to unleash itself on Kansai. While this means sticky, uncomfortable heat all day and night, it also means summer festivals, or 'matsuri', with plenty of opportunities to dress up in traditional Japanese summer clothes, gorge on festival foods such as yakisoba and candy apples, and enjoy float processions and firework displays.

Gion Matsuri in Kyoto is one of Japan's most famous festivals, said to be over a thousand years old. It lasts all through July, but the festival climaxes on the 17th with the grand parade. The three nights leading up to this parade are known as yoiyama, which are pre-parades. We went to the Gion Matsuri yoiyama on the 16th, which was the hottest day of the year so far.

Shijo-Karasuma, Kyoto, on night of Gion Matsuri Yoiyama

Traditional musicians playing on naginata-boko

For me, one of the best parts of the festival was getting to see lots of people dressed up in yukata and jinbei. Especially the girls - the colours and patterns of the yukata were so bright, the obi bows were so cute, and hairstyles were immaculate. I decided to wear a jinbei, which consists of a top and shorts - usually men wear them, but I found a very girly version, and thought it was kind of funky. On the way to Kyoto we got some funny looks on the train, and even heard two old men loudly appraising our outfits. It was a relief to finally meet up with the other exchange students, and see them also looking awkward in various states of Japanese dress (one student had rather creatively paired hiking boots with his yukata).

Rocking the jinbei.

Girls in yukata

We spent about an hour walking up and down the streets, listening to the music of the men sitting in the naginata-boko, watching the police meekly try to organise the crowds into two orderly lines, and complaining about the heat. Then someone suggested we check out the food stalls, and I'm not ashamed to admit that the rest of the night was spent eating everything from chocolate ice bananas to fried potato curls.

Food stalls (shaved ice in the front)

Yakisoba stall

Festival atmosphere

Going to a matsuri in Japan is one of those must-do cultural experiences. Even if you're not really interested in the history behind the festivals, it's worth it just to party with the locals - whether it be being handed a container of yakisoba at a street vendor by a heavily tattooed man, scooping up a goldfish at a stall with a little kid, or sitting in the gutter drinking chu-hi with a group of drunk university students.

Three Days in Seoul, South Korea

I'm standing on the subway in Seoul, awkwardly clutching the hand ring, and trying not to make eye contact with the old man sitting down in front of me, who is, for some reason, staring pointedly at me. He says something in Korean. I smile apologetically and ignore him. He tries again, more urgently. This time he begins making strange hand gestures. He is rubbing at his crotch furiously and grunting out words I don't understand. Then he points at my crotch, gabbering away and moving his fingers up in a sliding motion. What? Mortified, I look down. Oh. My fly is undone. I deal to the problem, and the old man chuckles, and sits back, satisfied.

This, I thought to myself, would never happen in Japan.

During my three day trip to Seoul - barely a two hour flight away - I experienced a glorious culture shock whirlwind of language, food, people and culture. It all happened at once. Less than two weeks ago, Ryan, one of our friends and I decided spontaneously to go to Korea. We bought cheap flights on the new budget airline Peach, booked accommodation on Hostelworld.com, and armed ourselves with the Lonely Planet Seoul travel guide and a 'Survival Korean' language book. Then we were off.

Walking through Hongdae, the university district where we were staying, at midnight on the Wednesday night we arrived, I was surprised to see almost everything was still open, and people were everywhere. Neon lights with hangul characters twinkled invitingly, rainbow-coloured pamphlets advertising clubs, restaurants and shows littered the ground. The smell of barbecued meat and kimchi wafted outside through open doors, followed by the sweet scent of squeezed lemons as we walked past one of the many lemonade stands dotted around the nighttime streets.

The people were open, too. Young couples walked around holding hands, making out, not caring who was watching. Crossing busy roads, people weren't afraid to touch you, in order to jostle past. The older men and women working the street vendor stalls gossiped away as they stirred big, bubbling pots of orange topogi, and twirled sticks of vegetables and hot dogs into vats of oil. As we lined up for a hot dog, the woman at the stand used her spoon to nonchalantly fish a hair out of the topogi pot. It didn't seem to matter.

Night scenes in Hongdae

Sipping on homemade lemonade served in a plastic bag.

It was three days filled with shopping. We saw the workings of Seoul's famous markets, Namdaemun and Dongdaemun, with their mazes of streets and stalls selling all sorts of treasures. Ryan took up haggling as a sport. The reaction would always be the same - the salesperson would give a long, pained sigh, and glare, before pulling out a calculator and typing out the new price. I guess you have to be careful not to rip them off too much - at Namdaemun, we saw two Korean men get into a loud fist fight over a pair of women's underwear, which attracted a curious crowd of onlookers. I loved the Migliore malls - multi-storeyed malls found at the edge of the markets filled to the brim with clothes, of all styles, qualities and prices. It was a completely different style of shopping than I'm used to. No changing rooms, and if you saw something you liked you had to get it immediately, otherwise there was a high chance you'd never find it again. It turned shopping into a risky adventure.

Scenes at the Namdaemun market

Myeong Dong was Seoul's equivalent of Harajuku, teeming with fashion, and popular chain stores such as Forever 21, H&M, and Uniqlo. All sorts of interesting people could be found here - from young men in full army uniform on dates with their girlfriends, to Korean nuns - there were so many churches in Seoul, neon crosses visible on the skyline in every direction. A guy dressed in a dog costume, advertising a dog cafe. A girl in a Minnie Mouse costume, advertising a cat cafe. There were beauty and skincare shops, which Korea is so famous for, absolutely everywhere. At Skin Food, The Face Shop, Missha and Holika Holika, I bought baskets full of face masks, creams and lotions. These shops smelled amazing - most memorably, Holika Holika smelled like soda, as it had just released a new range of soda-scented beauty products. They also gave out handfuls of free samples and testers with your purchase, which was another incentive to buy things.

Myeong Dong shopping area

Looks a bit like Harajuku, don't you think?

Cat cafe this way.

We visited the ancient palaces Changdeokgung and Gyeongbokgung, exploring the grounds and admiring their teal blue floral designs that almost looked like something out of the flower power movement. At Gyeongbokgung, we were lucky enough to witness the changing of the guards ceremony, which saw a procession flamboyantly dressed traditional soldiers marching with flags and musical instruments. The palaces were spectacular, nestled within the cityscape. They contained wide, sparse spaces and gardens, a contrast to the bustle of the inner city.

At Changdeokgung

Design on the palace

Gyeongbokgung Palace

Changing of the guards ceremony

On Saturday we had wanted to visit the weekly Hongdae Free Market, held at a playground and run by arts students from Hongik University, but unfortunately it was cancelled because of the dubious weather. We found ourselves hanging out at the playground anyway, enjoying warm pies from a food stall while watching a boy band film an amateurish looking video, which was attracting quite a crowd. Even in the grey weather during the day, the colours of Hongdae were vibrant, the atmosphere was electric. As well as being a centre for arts, Hongdae is the birthplace of Korean punk music - you can see it literally written on the walls, with graffiti everywhere, posters promoting Marxism, and murals featuring a gorilla wearing headphones, with 'fuck the system' written next to it. Strangely, amongst all this anarchy was also a bright pink Hello Kitty themed cafe.

Playground in Hongdae - home to the Free Market

Boy band shooting a music video

Hello Kitty Cafe

Seoul was an interesting escape from Japan, but I have to admit, it was a relief to come back to the comfort of a language and culture I can kind of understand. I will definitely be going back to explore Korea in the future, but until then I will put on my face masks and listen to K-Pop... and make sure my fly is done up at all times.

A Geisha in Kyoto

One of the classes I'm taking at Kansai University is geisha culture, where we look at the history of geisha, how they are represented in film and media, and how they live their lives in the 'flower and willow world'. Last weekend we went on a field trip to Kyoto, where we did a walking tour through the hanamachi (geisha districts), and had lunch, which was attended by a real geiko.

When it comes to Kyoto, I think a lot of foreigners often have this romanticised image in their heads of temples and tea ceremonies, untouched traditional culture. If you happen to arrive through the huge modernist monster that is Kyoto Station, this image is promptly shattered (at least it was for me). That's why it's sort of a relief to go to Gion, or Miyagawa-cho, and find that the way you imagined Kyoto to be actually does exist, even if you have to look closely to find it. The narrow, maze-like streets, cobbled alleyways, and boarded up houses don't reveal too much about the mysterious geisha world, but every now and then you'll catch rare glimpses of it - whether it be hearing the sounds of a shamisen drifting through an open window, or seeing a maiko or geiko shuffling from one tea house to the next.

The geiko our class got to meet was named Miehina, and she was lovely. At lunch, she came around all of our tables so we could talk to her and ask her questions, which she would answer in strong Kyoto-dialect. Our table was last, and we were all kind of nervous and giggly and couldn't think up many questions. But she didn't seem to mind. In many ways she was just like a normal girl. One of the students at my table had a tiny toy camera, and Miehina was very interested in it, and started playing around with it, taking funny pictures and doing the 'peace' pose. Speaking with her, she was much less formal than I'd imagined a geisha to be - she smiled and laughed a lot. Then she performed a dance for us, and it was like a different person - so very poised and controlled. You could tell how seriously she takes her art.

When I went home and googled Miehina, I found countless photographs, posts, and even a documentary about her. It seems that within the geisha world, she's like a celebrity. I guess if I had the chance to talk to her again, I'd ask what it feels like to be photographed all the time, to constantly have people's eyes on you? Being a geisha is a beautiful job, but also, I imagine, a tough one.