japanstuff #3
No pictures for this one, sorry to say, just some pretentious text as I take a couple of things that happened to me and then try to tie them into some huge over-generalization on religion. Dare you look?
When I learned that my Oka-San wanted to take us to Izu for a couple of days, I was excited for several reasons. I had read that Izu (itself a town inside the Izu Peninsula) was well known for its onsen, or hot springs. And indeed, the place where we were going to stay had one, albeit an indoor one similar to the public baths I've visited previously. And as was the case from last year, I got a little nervous beforehand, particularly because of the setting. Unlike my last time, I was not staying in a tourist place but in an apartment complex. S' company has an apartment in this resort town, for employees who want to use it as a vacation, and it had been reserved for our stay. That meant I was going straight into locals territory, which would be nerve-wracking enough to make sure i follow the rules of the tradition, let alone knowing that I could bank on the fact that I'd be the only naked white guy in the room. "But think of the potential LiveJournal stories!" I countered within myself, and before you knew it I was stripped down and ready to get wet. The things I do for you.
To describe the whole scene, the first room after you enter the onsen area is a place where you take your clothes off and place them into a basket. There's a towel there for you, about the size of a hand towel, for you to use as you bathe. The room also has a scale and a fan for those who might need some relief after being immersed in rather hot water. Away from that main area, there's a table beside a window that gives you a nice view of some cherry blossoms and the sea beyond that, for contemplation. Once you've disrobed, you enter through a door into the bath area - immediately in front of me was a small pool, about 3'x10', of cold water. Ahead of that was the shower area, the part of the bath process where you actually clean yourself. This was a partitioned-off area with about 15 faucets. Just beyond that was a small circular jaccuzzi. And the bulk of the remainder of the area was comprised of two huge baths - the main bath which probably measured about 300 square feet, and another bath about 150 square feet that contained some kind of massage machine. Alas, I had heard the latter was out of order. There was a guy in the jaccuzzi, a guy in the main bath, and a father and son in the shower area where I was headed. This was a blessing in disguise.
I learned most of what I knew about public baths from my first trip to Japan, when my Oto-san took me to one [please forgive the misspellings and naive writing in that one - I was a different person then]. And while I learned a lot, I was a bit crazed at the process as he cleaned himself as an absurd-to-keep-up pace. It made me feel a bit more nervous trying to bathe at such a tempo, but seeing the father and son from a distance, i realized that Oto-san probably did it so quickly because it was near closing time, not that Japanese people typically do things that quickly and will chastise a gaijin for wasting so much time at the shower (silly, I know, but I feel really vulnerable at times like these). That burden off my mind, I was able to clean myself at a relaxed pace, really getting a good majority of anxieties out of my mind, and then I was ready to go to the bath.
I said "a good majority of anxieties", not all. In retrospect, I never had an idea that my attempts to calm A-chan down at night would have an effect on my onsen experience. By this, I'm referring to the hickeys that she has left on my upper chest and shoulder area. When she wakes up in the middle of the night and I try to calm her down, she occasionally gnaws on me to calm her sucking reflex down (not to be confused with her actually being hungry), and as a result I have these huge reddish purple marks all over me. But of course the people in the bath don't know that back story. They could take a look at my body and plausibly assume that I've decided to take a break from my harem of 4 nymphomaniacs with chest fetishes in order to have a relaxing bath. So I decided to stay at neck level in the bath. Of course, after being in the water for more than 7 seconds I soon lost almost every care I had in the world and then tranced out completely.
After some time had passed, I decided to step out of the bath and into the unoccupied jaccuzzi. That machine was not working either, but the water was much hotter than the bath itself, not scalding but not so far from it. As I relaxed, a guy in the bath waded over close to me and said "Ohayou gozaimasu" to me, and I ohayou gozaimasued back. He then asked me some basic Japanese which turned into English as time moved on, just asking me how I had found myself In Izu and how long I had been in Japan and such, and I asked him some basic questions too. S told me afterwards that this is something known as "naked talk", and is a special thing to have happen. It made me feel more assured about my language skills, because I learned not only can I talk a little to people in their own language, but if prompted I could actually do so in the nude!
Eventually I stepped out of the jaccuzzi and back into the bath. I never got in the cold water because I didn't really know what it was for and (more tellingly) I never observed anyone in it. S explained after the fact that its healthy for your pores to cycle back and forth between an extended time in the bath and a short time in the cold water. To that, I can only say that if it causes you to feel even better than the way I felt afterwards, I'm not sure I want to experience such floating bliss this early in life.
I wandered out of the onsen, toweled off and put my clothes back on, and sat at the table that looked out on the cherry blossoms for a few minutes. After that, I went upstairs to the apartment lobby, where I was to meet up with S, Oka-San, and A-chan who was having her first onsen experience as well. I got a cool Asahi tea from a vending machine (they make much more than beer) and looked out their windows towards the sea. The truth of the matter is that as wonderful as the onsen makes your body feel, the best feeling of all is about 20-30 minutes afterwards when your insides just start tingling intensely from the effects of the long soak.
As an epilogue, several days later S & I went to a department store and came across a display of recliners that offer massages. Similar to what you see in your typical Brookstone, but this is Japan we're talking about so you had about 7 or 8 different models side by side all hooked up with gadgetry. S told me to try one out and I sat in a model [edited to add link] that had an accompanying remote control written in kanji explaining what all it does. S pressed a button and it began. What she didn't tell me was that she merely didn't activate something but instead she had set me up for a 15-minute sample exercise of what all this chair can do. My arms were squeezed, my feet were stretched, a tablesaw went inbetween my shoulderblades, and frankly I think it did some things to me that are illegal in Texas. Without a doubt the most homoerotic experience of my life. 15 minutes later, I stumbled out of that chair and every part of my body was PULSING. I could barely even speak complete sentences (thank goodness there's no such thing as "recliner talk", I would've babbled like a lunatic). If I had one of those things at home, I probably wouldn't get up from it until the electric company yanks our service for failure to get up from it long enough to realize I haven't paid the bill.
And how does this end up with Buddhism? Well, forgive me if I make some sweeping statements that are impossible to verify (or more likely all-too-possible to debunk), but here goes...I'm not a Buddhist, and I don't really know anyone who is one, so I apologize to hieronymous and anyone else who may practice the religion because by no means do I mean to offend (in all honesty I'd love to know more about Buddhism, as its the religion that seems to match up most to my ideology). But the thing I generally hear about Buddhism is how it teaches that the world is full of suffering, and we go through our lives bearing this in mind over and over again throughout lifetimes until we finally let ourselves go whereupon we enter nirvana. However, if I could use Japan as an example of anything, it would be as an example of pleasure. In my mind there simply cannot be a more beautiful place on this earth; many of the traditions are still in place and are moving beyond words; and these two stories above are but of a few of the examples of physical pleasure, and both are undeniably associated with Japanese culture (well, recliners perhaps not so much, but shiatsu massages which is what the recliner was doing). I find that my times in Japan have been without a doubt the most purely enjoyable times of my life for all of my senses, and I find the dichotomy between that and the stance behind the official religion of the country endorsed by 80 million people to be all the more curious.
Wow, that was longer than I expected it to be. So to make up for it, here's a picture for you after all:
I say, what could be more Japanese than blooming sakura with a Pocari Sweat vending machine underneath?
When I learned that my Oka-San wanted to take us to Izu for a couple of days, I was excited for several reasons. I had read that Izu (itself a town inside the Izu Peninsula) was well known for its onsen, or hot springs. And indeed, the place where we were going to stay had one, albeit an indoor one similar to the public baths I've visited previously. And as was the case from last year, I got a little nervous beforehand, particularly because of the setting. Unlike my last time, I was not staying in a tourist place but in an apartment complex. S' company has an apartment in this resort town, for employees who want to use it as a vacation, and it had been reserved for our stay. That meant I was going straight into locals territory, which would be nerve-wracking enough to make sure i follow the rules of the tradition, let alone knowing that I could bank on the fact that I'd be the only naked white guy in the room. "But think of the potential LiveJournal stories!" I countered within myself, and before you knew it I was stripped down and ready to get wet. The things I do for you.
To describe the whole scene, the first room after you enter the onsen area is a place where you take your clothes off and place them into a basket. There's a towel there for you, about the size of a hand towel, for you to use as you bathe. The room also has a scale and a fan for those who might need some relief after being immersed in rather hot water. Away from that main area, there's a table beside a window that gives you a nice view of some cherry blossoms and the sea beyond that, for contemplation. Once you've disrobed, you enter through a door into the bath area - immediately in front of me was a small pool, about 3'x10', of cold water. Ahead of that was the shower area, the part of the bath process where you actually clean yourself. This was a partitioned-off area with about 15 faucets. Just beyond that was a small circular jaccuzzi. And the bulk of the remainder of the area was comprised of two huge baths - the main bath which probably measured about 300 square feet, and another bath about 150 square feet that contained some kind of massage machine. Alas, I had heard the latter was out of order. There was a guy in the jaccuzzi, a guy in the main bath, and a father and son in the shower area where I was headed. This was a blessing in disguise.
I learned most of what I knew about public baths from my first trip to Japan, when my Oto-san took me to one [please forgive the misspellings and naive writing in that one - I was a different person then]. And while I learned a lot, I was a bit crazed at the process as he cleaned himself as an absurd-to-keep-up pace. It made me feel a bit more nervous trying to bathe at such a tempo, but seeing the father and son from a distance, i realized that Oto-san probably did it so quickly because it was near closing time, not that Japanese people typically do things that quickly and will chastise a gaijin for wasting so much time at the shower (silly, I know, but I feel really vulnerable at times like these). That burden off my mind, I was able to clean myself at a relaxed pace, really getting a good majority of anxieties out of my mind, and then I was ready to go to the bath.
I said "a good majority of anxieties", not all. In retrospect, I never had an idea that my attempts to calm A-chan down at night would have an effect on my onsen experience. By this, I'm referring to the hickeys that she has left on my upper chest and shoulder area. When she wakes up in the middle of the night and I try to calm her down, she occasionally gnaws on me to calm her sucking reflex down (not to be confused with her actually being hungry), and as a result I have these huge reddish purple marks all over me. But of course the people in the bath don't know that back story. They could take a look at my body and plausibly assume that I've decided to take a break from my harem of 4 nymphomaniacs with chest fetishes in order to have a relaxing bath. So I decided to stay at neck level in the bath. Of course, after being in the water for more than 7 seconds I soon lost almost every care I had in the world and then tranced out completely.
After some time had passed, I decided to step out of the bath and into the unoccupied jaccuzzi. That machine was not working either, but the water was much hotter than the bath itself, not scalding but not so far from it. As I relaxed, a guy in the bath waded over close to me and said "Ohayou gozaimasu" to me, and I ohayou gozaimasued back. He then asked me some basic Japanese which turned into English as time moved on, just asking me how I had found myself In Izu and how long I had been in Japan and such, and I asked him some basic questions too. S told me afterwards that this is something known as "naked talk", and is a special thing to have happen. It made me feel more assured about my language skills, because I learned not only can I talk a little to people in their own language, but if prompted I could actually do so in the nude!
Eventually I stepped out of the jaccuzzi and back into the bath. I never got in the cold water because I didn't really know what it was for and (more tellingly) I never observed anyone in it. S explained after the fact that its healthy for your pores to cycle back and forth between an extended time in the bath and a short time in the cold water. To that, I can only say that if it causes you to feel even better than the way I felt afterwards, I'm not sure I want to experience such floating bliss this early in life.
I wandered out of the onsen, toweled off and put my clothes back on, and sat at the table that looked out on the cherry blossoms for a few minutes. After that, I went upstairs to the apartment lobby, where I was to meet up with S, Oka-San, and A-chan who was having her first onsen experience as well. I got a cool Asahi tea from a vending machine (they make much more than beer) and looked out their windows towards the sea. The truth of the matter is that as wonderful as the onsen makes your body feel, the best feeling of all is about 20-30 minutes afterwards when your insides just start tingling intensely from the effects of the long soak.
As an epilogue, several days later S & I went to a department store and came across a display of recliners that offer massages. Similar to what you see in your typical Brookstone, but this is Japan we're talking about so you had about 7 or 8 different models side by side all hooked up with gadgetry. S told me to try one out and I sat in a model [edited to add link] that had an accompanying remote control written in kanji explaining what all it does. S pressed a button and it began. What she didn't tell me was that she merely didn't activate something but instead she had set me up for a 15-minute sample exercise of what all this chair can do. My arms were squeezed, my feet were stretched, a tablesaw went inbetween my shoulderblades, and frankly I think it did some things to me that are illegal in Texas. Without a doubt the most homoerotic experience of my life. 15 minutes later, I stumbled out of that chair and every part of my body was PULSING. I could barely even speak complete sentences (thank goodness there's no such thing as "recliner talk", I would've babbled like a lunatic). If I had one of those things at home, I probably wouldn't get up from it until the electric company yanks our service for failure to get up from it long enough to realize I haven't paid the bill.
And how does this end up with Buddhism? Well, forgive me if I make some sweeping statements that are impossible to verify (or more likely all-too-possible to debunk), but here goes...I'm not a Buddhist, and I don't really know anyone who is one, so I apologize to hieronymous and anyone else who may practice the religion because by no means do I mean to offend (in all honesty I'd love to know more about Buddhism, as its the religion that seems to match up most to my ideology). But the thing I generally hear about Buddhism is how it teaches that the world is full of suffering, and we go through our lives bearing this in mind over and over again throughout lifetimes until we finally let ourselves go whereupon we enter nirvana. However, if I could use Japan as an example of anything, it would be as an example of pleasure. In my mind there simply cannot be a more beautiful place on this earth; many of the traditions are still in place and are moving beyond words; and these two stories above are but of a few of the examples of physical pleasure, and both are undeniably associated with Japanese culture (well, recliners perhaps not so much, but shiatsu massages which is what the recliner was doing). I find that my times in Japan have been without a doubt the most purely enjoyable times of my life for all of my senses, and I find the dichotomy between that and the stance behind the official religion of the country endorsed by 80 million people to be all the more curious.
Wow, that was longer than I expected it to be. So to make up for it, here's a picture for you after all:
I say, what could be more Japanese than blooming sakura with a Pocari Sweat vending machine underneath?