Naked Girl in Japan

As a policy, I try to avoid public nakedness as much as possible. There are variations on 'public', but I generally classify it as 'me plus 1', where the 'plus 1' is a complete stranger. There was a lot of public nakedness going on at the ashram in India - for those of you with dirty minds, let me complete that sentence - during my prescribed ayurvedic massage sessions. Since then, I've managed to keep the public nudie time to a minimum.

Tragically, Japan is conspiring against my policy, and the situation is simply beyond my control. For accommodation for my two weeks here in Japan I've booked 3 types - business hotels, hostels, and ryokans, which are traditional Japanese inns. As I discovered last night, and confirmed tonight - public bathing is the norm in both ryokans and youth hostels. By public bathing I mean the following. There's a curtain or opaque glass door (no lock) that separates the change room from the hall. A series of cubicles are available for you to store your belongings while bathing. Through another glass door is the communal bathroom, which features a half dozen open-concept showers, a few toddler-sized plastic stools and a very large tiled tub off to the side, full to the brim with hot water. Here's how it is supposed to work. You soap up and rinse off at the mini showers - the shower head is positioned at chest height so I think the idea is you're supposed to shower while perched on the stool. Once you're clean, apparently you go for a dip in the communal tub. Considering the policy I explained earlier, you can imagine how I was feeling when I sussed out the situation. Genders are separated however, a small victory.

Last night I whipped in and out rapidly, forgoing the dip in the tub completely. Here's my thinking on the communal tub - total and utter grossness. I'm not sure how often they drain the water - there were signs up in the ryokan the other night that instructed bathers not to drain the tub after use. (I'm sure it is cleaned out frequently, but it's simply the fear of the unknown.) So putting aside the fact you might find yourself in a tub with a complete stranger, one who is completely naked, you're assuming everyone before you (and who knows how many bodies that might include!) have soaped up sufficiently. I'm sure someone could make a case that my love-affair with hot tubs really isn't that far off this experience, but my argument is that at least in the hot tub there's a layer of spandex between my important bits and a pool of contaminated water. And there's the immediacy of the communal bath that is much more confronting and therefore panic-inducing. Anyway, I managed to zip in and out so quickly, public nakedness didn't occur. (I've just realized that public nakedness could be interpreted to mean me naked in a public place with no witnesses, but for the purposes of this ramble, let's stick to the original definition.)

After checking myself into the youth hostel, I did a quick tour of the place to suss out the bathing situation. I'd hoped that a hostel might feature western shower stalls in a concession to the foreign tourists, but no such luck. As I'd come in from dinner I noticed a large group of school kids having dinner in the lobby restaurant. Theorizing that I didn't really need an audience of giggling school girls while I shaved my legs, I beat a quick path to the bathroom. For those of you who read about my drama back in Vietnam when my magical quick dry towel was sacrificed to the Laundry Gods, you'll be happy to know I managed to acquire a new towel in Singapore - at five times the cost of the original, but hey, life is hard. The new towel isn't full size, I simply could not justify the price - but it still was triple the size of the hand towel provided by the hostel. So me and my trusty new quick dry towel headed down to the bath. Stepping into the change area I came across my first and thankfully only naked body of the evening that wasn't my own - a middle-aged Japanese lady. We made very brief eye contact then went about our business. As I'd made my way down from my room to the bathroom, I'd decided on my philosophy for the event - act like this whole public naked bathing thing is no biggie, my thinking being if I seemed freaked out by it I'd make an even larger spectacle of myself than my bare ass would manage on its own. And a part of me realizes that given the entirely public nature of bathing, clearly it is in no way voyeuristic for the Japanese. Even accepting this intellectually though didn't prevent me from being mildly disturbed by the whole thing.

After all my apprehension I managed to successfully shower in privacy. Three school girls entered the change room as I was whipping on my PJ's. They must attend an English language school, as they chatted in English. During my eavesdropping I was amused to learn that at least one of the girls was equally disturbed by the public nakedness, as she peaked into the bathroom to first determine whether anyone was bathing, and then attempted to negotiate with her friends that she could go in on her own first, and they could go in after. I guess I'm not the only girl in Japan with a policy against public nakedness.

I have a few nights booked in business hotels (translation - Western style to look forward to. And I'm trying to look at the whole experience from a mature perspective. While I don't think public bathing is going to turn me into some sort of exhibitionist (the world breathes a collective sigh of relief), I think it will lessen one of my many hang-ups. And that's all good.