A Tale of Two Baths
A hearty soak (not Biwa-no-yu)
Late Saturday morning we sat in her smoky kitchen deciding what we would do that afternoon. The old woodstove blazed as we sipped the mix of Japanese teas Juna always keeps simmering. She still hadn’t fixed the stove’s seals, so every time the fire stoked up cedar clouds drifted across the room. This should have been a relaxing start to the weekend. Instead I had the urge to stop, drop, and roll. Whatever we would do, lingering in the smoke all day like slabs of curing meat wouldn’t be it. Never in a rush, we cracked a window and watched the downy flakes of snow drift down.
As I gazed into my pool of hot amber tea, a curl of steam rose from the mug. Suddenly, a flash of inspiration. One of the boons of Japan’s intense geological activity is that natural hot springs abound. Known as onsen, in most locales they have long been built over and put to work in spas. While the setting may not be au naturel, the earth fired water most definitely is. And there’s little better than a long hot soak during the winter’s freeze.
One good thing about Juna, she’s always up for a trip to the onsen. We finish our tea, throw on our jackets and step out into the snow. Matsumoto’s a castle town at the base of the Northern Japanese Alps. The current castle was built by the local warlords in 1594. Just to the north lies Asama Onsen, a historic neighborhood and hot spring enclave. Even before the castle’s time it was well known, and today it’s packed with spas, ryokan (traditional Japanese inns), and all manner of travelers and locals looking to warm their bones.
After some hemming and hawing we settle on one of my favorite bathhouses, Biwa-no-yu. It has been operating at least since the castle was built and was the preferred haunt of the ruling feudal lords for years. The walls along the way to the baths are lined with glass cases displaying samurai artifacts; aged mulberry paper records bearing the warlords’ seals (used in Japan in place of signatures) help you realize your soak will be steeped with history.
Passing beneath the structure’s original hand hewn wooden beams, at last we reach the entrance to the baths. We say we’ll meet in an hour. Juna heads through the curtain marked with the ideogram for “woman,” and I do not. Konyoku, or mixed sex baths, were once the norm in Japan. They still exist, but have gone into steep decline. And while much has changed over the centuries, the onsen’s basic function has not. A trip to the spa is not meant simply to get you clean. In fact, you wash up before soaking in a low stooled common area. Doing so in the tub would be an unspeakable faux pas, and considered rather gross as well. In Japan, bathing is simply to luxuriate.
Clothes placed in a wicker changing room basket, I slide open the glass door that leads to the washing area where men squat on wooden stools before a line of mirrors set along the wall. The room echoes with conversation and the sound of water running off bodies onto the floor. The scene’s relaxed yet lively, folks scrubbing, shaving, laughing. A father soaps his son’s hair, an old man lathers up his friend’s back, another attends his own feet with the care of an infant’s first wash.
After cleaning up I mosey into the bathing area. Japan’s onsen present a staggering array of means to soak, from simple heated pools, to all manner of bubbling, churning, and jetting Jacuzzis. Traditional Biwa-no-yu though is a simple affair—a single wooden tub of steaming water set into the floor. As I slip into the neck deep geothermal pool, dads, granddads, little boys and girls move languidly about, float in the water, cool off in the corners. School kids perch on low window sills in the rising steam like cherubim. The dim afternoon light filters through the room on a communal nakedness untouched by the puritanical. Here the simple fact of enjoying a bath together is supremely important.
Some people spend hours at the onsen, and there is a rhythm to it that’s easy to follow: soak until too hot, cool off until comfortable, repeat. After about 10 minutes I start feeling like a slow cooked chicken so step outdoors where Biwa-no-yu has its antique rotenburo (open air tub). Arms spread to the air, the flakes swirl their crazy paths around me. It’s fun to stand naked and steaming in the snow.
Soon I climb into the rotenburo, in this case a beautiful hinkoki cypress tub set above ground. Built to hold 10 or so, I stretch out in the steaming water and savor the moment alone. Mind soon drifts to the old Edo period, samurai warlords in their heyday, and I imagine a medieval soak. If the castle lord slipped in across from me, would I even know? The baths have always been a great equalizer in Japanese society. Whatever your status, unclothed in the water your are utterly the same. Suddenly I’m snapped out of my reverie by an older gentleman’s throaty groan as he eases into the bath. Japanese men seem obliged to let this noise sail on entry. I’ve come to realize it’s part of the language of bathing, a way of saying, “Hey guys, doesn’t this feel great?” without actually having to engage anyone in conversation.
Though they say for your health you should pass through three cycles of in and out, before long I’m heated through and have had enough. I rinse off, get dressed, and head to the lounge to meet Juna. After a typically lengthy wait (in all fairness, you can’t rush a bath) we make our way back to her place well relaxed and plenty warm. There we find an extra set of footprints leading through the snow to her door. In the dimly lit kitchen sits our friend Koji, scribbling a note.
After a few minutes, he says, “Actually, your timing’s great. I’m off to the onsen. Want to come?”
While people soak whole weekends away at hot spring inns, once in a day is plenty for me. So I decline. But then I glance over and see Juna hunched down stuffing wood into the already smoldering stove. I catch a whiff of what’s to come.
“On second thought,” I say, “I could go for another bath.”
Soon we trudge along the river back toward Asama Onsen. It’s late afternoon and the snowfall has eased enough to reveal Matsumoto draped in white. While establishments like Biwa-no-yu provide an elegant bathing experience, there are plenty of hole-in-the-wall bathhouses known as sento as well—the geothermal equivalent of the local pub. While the basic etiquette remains the same, sento tend to be cheap and bare bones, just a few spigots for washing off and a single pool, often jam packed with seniors. The closest bathhouse to Juna’s is exactly such a place.
We undress in the changing area, and when Koji removes a wafer thin shard of soap from his bag, I realize I’m soapless. While more upscale facilities like Biwa-no-yu provide amenities, not so most sento. Technically I’m clean, but that’s beside the point—people need to see some scrubbing. Koji’s soapy sliver won’t help me, so I ask the matron working the counter that partitions the men’s and women’s changing areas if she has a bar that a caught-out foreigner might use. “100 yen,” she says. My clothes are already in the locker, so I go dig out a bill. As she makes change, Yesterday from The Beatles comes on the radio. And there I stand, buck naked buying soap from an old woman while Paul McCartney croons. “Is this strange?” I wonder for a moment. From the other side of the steamed glass, the voices of the old men boom as they yell across the tub. “Nope, nothing strange here.”
After a brief dip in the near scalding water (some bathhouses pride themselves on sheer heat) we dry off and step outside. The glow of the onsen lasts long as we pass down the snow covered streets, jackets draped over our arms. The clouds have begun to break in the west, revealing pink streaks of sunset behind the mountains. Koji wanders on. Strolling toward the night, heated through with Earth, I turn toward Juna’s and the smoky inundation that surely awaits.