Bathing in the Hot Springs

How many foreigners get a chance to bathe in a Japanese onsen? How many foreigners want to? We’re talking about a public bath here. I suppose my willingness, even eagerness, to try it was a sign of (please mark only one) my enlightened cultural sensitivity or my complete caffeine- and media-induced delirium by this point in the trip.

Drive into the hot spring town, check into a hot spring hotel, check out your hotel room, not in the “Western” style of a business hotel but in the “traditional” style with tatami mats and bedding on the floor, with alarmingly firm pillows, and—less traditionally but still alarmingly—separate trash bins for “combustables” and “incombustibles.” Wouldn’t want to get those mixed up, would we?

Change into your bathrobe and bath slippers and it’s off to the baths. Shower first, because you wouldn’t want to take a bath while dirty. There are indoor tubs, but what you want are the outdoor ones. Now, remember that you’re up in the mountains of Hokkaido. It’s really cold. There’s probably an ice palace next door. But hey, you’ve come this far. You’ve braved mini-volleyball and the fish market and the Shinkansen, so out you go into the freezing cold, stark naked, and you let yourself down slowly into the hot water, and the world changes.

Or, to be precise, your relation to the world changes, because you now relate to the world as someone whose face is freezing (not the top of your head—a damp towel on top of your head will fix that) and whose body is soaking in very, very hot water; whereas formerly you related as someone in a circumstance other than this. I’m not sure those two worldviews can be reconciled. I think you had to be there to understand, but it’s deeply soothing in a way that lasted for several days, and I think I was getting very close to total cosmic enlightenment before I realized I was half-unconscious from the extreme heat and I’d better get out. I strongly recommend the experience.