Even as I approached Sendai, I began to decompress. The stress of Tokyo bid me farewell for a couple of days, as I squeezed into the train packed with commuters from Shin-Yurigoaka in suburban Kawasaki to Tokyo during peak hour traffic. As I sat and watched the world go by in the Shinkansen, just looking at the grey clouds and mist over the mountains made me feel relief. From the heat and from the crowds. Green, green, green, it was a welcome sight after the multi-coloured kaleidoscopes of Shinjuku and Shibuya. The rice fields were so lush in the countryside, they looked like football fields… the rivers were brown, black and frothy due to the rush of the rain… the homes only two floors high. I was greeted once again with the horizon rising up unevenly into the shape of mountains in the distance. A sigh of relief.
The scenes outside of a train window provide glimpses of culture. Old wooden houses with tiled roofs, smoke puffing out of factory chimneys and interestingly, little cemeteries in the middle of rice fields. Kyodo bochi, or community graves, were often located in the middle of rice fields because the rice field is what has held some villages together. In the past, they all worked the land and were fed by the fruits of their labour. No wonder the rice paddy is such a matter of pride for this country. The God inari is one of the most common around Japan, and is important for prayers of harvest. During my trip, I have learned that the prettiness of Japanese culture is merely just the surface. A beautiful surface that was born by tradition, but started as a connection to the land, as a necessity to care for every day needs. As I suppose is the root of every culture in the world. Another type of long standing tradition is one that I had the privilege of experiencing for one night.
Last night, I stayed at a ryokan or traditional Japanese hotel. I took a standard room, which meant that I slept on a futon and tatami mats. I needed to take my shoes off before I entered the room, and I was given shoes to walk around the hotel grounds in. Inside was a futon, neatly prepared, a low table and a zaisu and zabuton (effectively, a chair without legs with a sitting cushion placed on top). There sat two chairs and a table by the opaque wooden framed windows, softly letting the light in even though it was threatening to rain outside. There was more than enough wardrobe space, a little towel rack and a vanity with a toilet beside. There was however, no shower. The time had come for me to try a traditional Japanese onsen, and I was very nervous. I liked the idea of bathing in the mountain water, letting all the goodness infuse into my skin… but traditionally, you need to do this naked. No clothes are allowed at all. Luckily for this reason, the onsen are separated into mens and womens. But I was still nervous.
I, like many people, have not always had a good relationship with my body. Sometimes it does what I want, and those times are good… but other times, like now, it’s doing something all of its own. I have lost connection with my body over the last few years and it shows a little. It is a shape and size that I don’t really like, regardless of what anyone tells me. There are things about it that I want to change… but even if there wasn’t, the idea of being naked in front of others was still something I associated with shame. A part of yourself that is only shared with a partner or in the privacy of solitude. Walking into a room stark naked, and that being normal, was a big deal for me – and I suppose that I knew I would learn something from the experience. Plus, a friend re-assured me, that it’s traditional and if I really want the “Japanese” experience then I had to try it. So I wore something comfortable, put on my sturdy straw hotel slippers, and walked down stairs through reception to the bathing area.
Luckily, I’d looked up the etiquette before hand, so I had an idea of what to do. It was as described, thankfully, and I’d recommend anyone who’s planning to visit an onsen to read it. As I entered, I saw several other women already there, comfortably naked and getting on with whatever they wanted to do. I chose a clothes basket, took a deep breath and then did the thing. I stripped down, and just as quickly took the little towel I was permitted to take with me into the baths and covered myself again. I could feel that some people were looking. I was after all at a fairly traditional place. In fact, I think that I was the only foreigner to have stayed that day because when I checked in they knew immediately who I was. I looked inside and saw a variety of baths, but I knew where I had to go first thankfully… the showers. In Japan, you need to wash yourself fully with soap before you enter the baths, so as to keep the mountain water as pure as possible. There is a little stool, and at this place there were soaps, hair products and a shower head.
I placed my little towel in the driest place I could find and got to work. After washing, I stepped straight into the hottest pool I could find, so I could submerge and hide my body once more. I noticed after a while that everyone was just treating it as a relaxing moment… it was only me who was tense. I saw a group of ladies just chatting by the pool, and others who were moving from bath to bath quickly with their own plan in mind. Soon enough, I felt comfortable and decided to do the same. I tried out every bath, and decided to make my own rhythm. Outdoors, there were metal buckets overflowing with water, a little garden and a big pool under the cover of a pergola… I sat and enjoyed the peace of the fresh air mixing with the hot water, the sound of the breeze, the flowing water and the birds. I realised that I didn’t need to worry, I could just close my eyes and enjoy.
Eventually, I found the sauna, and by this time I wasn’t shy. I went it to sit down and I think I saw the same three ladies who I saw chatting earlier. I smiled at them and sat down on a loosely woven cloth placed on top of the wooden seats. As I did so, one of the ladies smiled and pointed to a foam cushion that she was sitting on and she helped me to open the door and find it. I apologised and then took my place again next to them. They started a conversation with me, which I was really surprised about. Unfortunately, my Japanese is so rudimentary that it didn’t last long. They asked me if I was staying at the hotel and I responded yes. They were kind enough, smiled and then continued watching the television. Was it weird?
I was in the sauna butt naked with these three older ladies and they were talking to me without any shame at all. In fact, by this point I no longer had any shame about my body either. I felt very comfortable in my skin. It’s a little strange, I thought, because the Japanese culture is so reserved. The people are generally so shy, how could they be comfortable in this kind of situation? I learned that there is something called hadaka no tsukiai or the naked relationship. That term probably has a lot more to it than I could ever know, but I think I gathered a sense of it during my stay. As I left, I nodded goodbye and even after that I didn’t hesitate to ask them if I didn’t know what to do. Even though we didn’t speak the same language, I could tell that there was a sense of being in it together. Everyone was not carrying their fabric façade with them. In the onsen, you’re all just humans.
It turned out that I found the experience to be not only healing for my body, but for my soul as well. I returned to my hotel room, donned my yakuta and sat to prepare green tea with a little sweet lemon mochi. It didn’t take me long, I fell asleep as early as 8:30pm that night, and it was a peaceful sleep indeed. I woke again just past 3.30am, feeling fresher than ever… and looking forward to going for a dip once again. I know it sounds silly, but I truly feel that experience changed my perspective on not only Japan, but me and my relationship with my body as well. My own naked relationship. I realised that there do exist people in this world who really don’t scrutinise your body, even when it is out there on display for all to see. They look at your eyes, at your smile, and they listen to you trying to express yourself. I guess in life you can look at things at surface level if you want: how it looks, the shape, size and colour of things. The style or decoration may be pleasing or perhaps it’s not to your taste. It’s like first impressions in relation to cultures, too.
It looks all pretty on the outside, and underneath they may be desperately trying to hide its ugly parts. However, this is not necessary. When we spend time immersed in a culture and really get to know it, then we see beneath the superficial. We see the bare human needs, and all the various ways in which they are or are not met. Tradition, roots, connection to the land and to each other. It becomes a matter of interest, of curiosity, and it is this which keeps you talking to someone or discovering a culture – not its attractiveness on the surface. A naked relationship with someone or something, maybe that’s when you put all preconceptions and masks down. You begin to talk human to human. I think that these days, I can look at myself in the same way. Beautiful is only exciting for a little while, but depth and complexity… that’s worth being curious about. Instead of trying to be beautiful for as long as I possibly can on the surface, perhaps I can simply look at myself in the mirror and be curious. No more making demands, now I can start asking questions. Create a dialogue with myself, one that sees me for who I am rather than what I show to others.
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