Hot springs for the body and soul

The art of bathing Japanese style

Hola Global Jigsaw Friends,

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As winter begins in earnest, in many parts of the world, I find myself thinking Eastward towards Japan and its onsen, or hot spring baths.

Onsen are a Japanese obsession. Visiting just the right one for the season is a finely honed skill. And these bubbling baths loom large on the nation’s cultural landscape. Literary giants like Yasunari Kawabata and Soseki Natsume had set (and written) some of their best-known works in hot spring towns.

Photo: Courtesy of Hotel Kazurabashi

Given that the Japanese archipelago is the world’s most geologically active region, home to over 100 volcanoes, it has no shortage of thermal baths. But like many things that cause little stress in other countries – making a cup of tea or sticking cut flowers in a vase- bathing in a hot spring pool can be a cultural minefield here. In onsen resorts foreign visitors are often handed lengthy documents on bathing etiquette and some are known to turn away non-Japanese all together, ostensibly out of fear that they might disrupt the delicate harmony of the communal bathing experience.

Being barred entry is very rare, but navigating an onsen can be intimidating for newbies. To begin with one has to enter the baths as nature intended- as bare bottomed as the day of one’s birth. Bathing suits are a strict no-no. Even towels aren’t permitted save tiny handkerchief-large squares that can be placed on the bather’s head where they remain free of any contact with the water.

Most onsen forbid entry to anyone with tattoos. (This is true even of public swimming pools. The local pool that I took my children to when we lived in Tokyo, ordered swimmers to cover up any tattoos with a rash guard so as to avoid “the awful feeling of other users and children.”)

Pic credit: Pallavi Aiyar

The reason for this tattoo stricture is the association of inked bodies with criminals or yakuza mobsters who tattooed themselves as a sign of gang membership.

Onsens are also selfie-free zones. Mobile phones are banned. So is swimming, splashing or chatter. Before entering the pool, bathers have to first take a shower and clean their bodies. Really clean their bodies. Like their life depends on it. A quick soaping would be met with hostility. Most onsen these days are sex segregated, although mixed bathing does exist. In either case, the eyes are to be turned inward to self-reflection, rather than on the anatomy of fellow-bathers.

For many months after I’d moved to Japan in 2016, I’d resisted visiting onsen, put off by the enforced-nudity and simply not sure that a pool of hot water would be worth all the fuss. But from the first time I finally lowered myself in – in a resort in central Honshu’s Nagano prefecture – I emerged a born again onsen-zealot. So much so that I suggested my family spend one of our February school half-term breaks skiing in Japan’s northern-most island: Hokkaido. I detested the cold and disliked skiing, but to luxuriate in an onsen open to a snow globe-like winter wonderland is the stuff of bucket lists.

At the resort, I breathed in white cold air as my body melted into 42-degree centigrade-induced relaxation. I took in the pine trees cloaked in snow and felt the softness of the powdery flakes as they settled on my hair. Because it’s the kind of thing I do, I thought of a Kobayashi Issa haiku:

Children eat snow,

Soaking

In the hot spring.

All of a sudden I was on the cusp of an epiphany. Some essential truth about the universe was about to reveal itself to my snow-and-steam-addled senses, when two excitable Thai women came splashing into the water, chattering about their day on the ski slopes. Splashing!? Chattering!? I retreated to a corner of the pool, casting passive-aggressive looks in their direction- water off their backs. A few minutes later a young Chinese mother walked gingerly through the freezing air towards the waters with a screaming child in tow. Screaming!

I beat a hasty retreat indoors, wearing an offended look that no one noticed, only to find a lady lounging, half immersed in the indoor pool, flicking though photographs on her MOBILE PHONE. Traumatized by this collapse of social order I staggered to the showers, where a blonde woman was shampooing away without a care in the world about the fact that her entire torso was covered in tattoos.

Contrary to how it felt, it wasn’t the apocalypse, merely an onsen resort in peak ski season that happened to be particularly popular with foreigners. But it seemed I was going native and glowering at foreigners was part of this process.

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We are off to Austria for this Christmas. And I will report back on the Viennese Christmas markets once we return. What are your holiday plans? Let me know. And as always, share and comment.

Until soon,

Pallavi