room for rubber ducky

I came home from an evening of frisbee tonight and felt seriously disappointed that I could in no convenient way relax in my or someone else’s bathtub. I longed to be back in Japan where I could quite easily find a steaming whirlpool in which to soak my tired muscles.

You see, it seems like the Japanese have it all figured out when it comes to bathing. While to many Americans a bath involves “soaking in your own filth,” the Japanese have taken the system of private and public baths to a sophisticated, and very hygenic, level. Take any one of the thousands of public baths, both natural springs and fuel-driven, that are scattered across the country.

You pay your fee at the front and enter through the curtains corresponding to your gender. You will find yourself in something resembling a locker room, wherein you will undress, lock up your clothes and valuables with a handy wooden key on a bracelet, and enter the bathing room. If you are shy or unused to being naked in public, you might attempt to cover yourself with your tiny bath towel, but it will be useless. Inside you will grab a bucket and a stool from a pile near the wall and find an open shower spot. For some reason, there are always mirrors accompanying any shower. You shower and remove all the soap and dirt from your body. THEN, you enter the bath. No towels in the bath, please. When you have had enough of the intense, yet trance-inducing heat, you get out, rinse off and either go get dressed or go back in for another dose. Dangling your feet is perfectly acceptable if you get too hot to keep your whole body in the water.

An average public bath

Public baths are great once you get past the whole being naked with other people thing. There are often herbal baths or baths of varying temperature for you to try out. Some baths are known for their high mineral content and have signs indicating what benefit you will get from a soak. “Beautiful skin” is advertized frequently. But if you don’t think you want to see the sagging behinds of the older generation, or you don’t want yours seen, then you might want to try a bath in the privacy of a Japanese home.

Again, the Japanese have been thinking about this sort of bathing for enough time that they have developed wonderful bathrooms. In these bathrooms, the shower and the bathtub are in the same room, but they are seperate. The bath can be filled automatically with the push of a button and the temperature regulated by hot tub-like jets. While you are showering, your own personal jacuzzi is filling up for your enjoyment.

It is traditional to cleanse yourself before sleeping in Japan. This comes in handy in the winter when you go to bed in an unheated house: a hot soak will get your body toasty warm before huddling under the covers. It also means that the whole family cycles through the bathroom before bedtime. If you sleep over at a Japanese house, you will inevitably be asked when you’d like to take a bath. Private bath etiquiette is just like the public bath: do your shower stuff outside the bathtub before you rest your tired, yet clean, body inside the bath. And when you’re done, make sure you tell whoever’s next in line that it’s their turn.

An average bathroom (note, the toilet is in a different room)

And so, the point of this long-winded explanation is, that I would like a Japanese bath. A space that is reserved for my clean, tired body to soak. A place that is not the place I have just showered in and then waited twenty minutes to fill, by which time it is cold. If I opened a public bath in the United States, would anyone come?