Sento percento

[imomus]

Hisae and I spent a couple of hours last night at Spaworld, a supersento near Osaka zoo. It's a kind of theme park of bathing, a succession of themed rooms in various national styles. Imagine the British Museum filled with water and naked people dangling small orange "modesty towels" in front of their genitals as they wade from exhibit to exhibit, room to room, water gadget to water gimmick. I thought I'd try to add an objective element to the subjective impression of the bliss of a visit to Spaworld by breaking it down to you in percentages.

1. Percentage of the day this spa is open: 100% (it's 24/7).

2. Percentage the 1000 yen entrance fee ($8.60 or €7.10) goes up by if you bathe after midnight: 100%.

3. Percentage of bathers on the men's floor who were gaijin while I was bathing: 3%.

4. Percentage of bathers on the men's floor who were little girls while I was bathing: 10%.

5. Little girls (aged 5-8, bathing with their fathers) are 50% sexy with their clothes on, but only 20% sexy naked, when they exactly resemble little boys without penises.

6. Percentage of time I spent in each bath: 12% in steam room and sauna, 21% outside in rotenburo area, enjoying the cool rain, 6% in a wooden barrel, 15% in a traditional Japanese cedar bath, 18% in the Arabic room, 19% in Indian jacuzzi room, 7% in Balinese flower bath, 2% in Egyptian sunbed room.

7. Percentage of bathers on women's floor who had navel piercings, according to Hisae: 15%.

8. Percentage of bathers on women's floor who were Gothic Lolitas, according to Hisae: 1%.

9. Percentage of bathers on women's floor who were Chinese or Koreans: 16%.

10. Percentage of "red wine bath" which was red in colour: 0% (it was, in fact, green).

11. Percentage I used to feel anxious about appearing naked in public: 87%. Percentage I now feel anxious about it: 5%.

12. Percentage of the time I found myself checking men's penises before their faces as they approached: 85%.

13. Percentage you feel clean after an hour in the baths at Spaworld: 110%.

14. Percentage of alcohol in the nama biru you sip with your fried isakaya meal at the base of the Osaka Tower afterwards: 5%.

15. Percentage of bodily well-being you experience at this point: 99.9%.

Comments

[dehumidifier.livejournal.com]

Another theme park walking the line between awesome and creepy, much like epcot or las vegas.

[lil-octopie.livejournal.com]

ahh i am envious. i really hope i get a chance to try spaworld next time i'm in osaka. or course there is the whole issue of whether i go by myself or with fellow travellers and the anxiety of being nude.

hope you get a chance to visit the lovely whale shark at the aquarium.

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

I love the baths depicted in the movie Spirited Away and wish I could visit them. This place looks even better!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

There's even a shark room at Spaworld! It was on the women's floor, so I won't see it until our next visit (they rotate the floors every month or so), but Hisae tells me the sharks are very small ones, mixed with carp, swimming about under the glass bottom of one of the pools.

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

What's creepy about EPCOT?

[shiu.livejournal.com]

that one is modelled after dogo onsen in matsuyama!

[armandae.livejournal.com]

What is the % of places that won't let gaikokujin in who have large full-torso wrapped "wan ponto" tattoos? (It's a tribal piece, but covers the full upper back, down both sides, and across the pelvis)

I'll be going back in June, and hoping to spend more time outside of Tokyo. Osaka sounds appealing. Esp the superonsen ;p

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

Great info! thanks. I plan to visit Japan in the next two years and I am making lists of places to check out.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Hisae says 99% of sentos will bar someone with the tattoos you describe. But I did see a very heavily tatooed guy, obvious yakuza (big blue fish design covering his whole back), in a sento in Amerikamura, Osaka, last year. The place is called Shimizuyu. He was staring people down, spent a long time washing. I suspect he was allowed in (against the usual sento mores) because everyone was too scared to complain, or he was a friend of the owners, or something. Anyway, I doubt they would allow foreigners with tattoos do the same.

[armandae.livejournal.com]

That makes me very sad. Even quite obviously non-japanese of any kind of way girls? (is it possible to tell from the outside if they will or not?)

and that the tats are very obv not irezumi? (the are just expansive, all blackwork though)

so sad.

awesome read, btw ;p

[heinzbitte.livejournal.com]

I read this sometimes, and would you mind if I were to added you?

[akabe.livejournal.com]

gee you did go in there. i lived near the place for almost a year and never ventured to go in, the BIGness kind of freaked me out - like straight out of a rem koolhaas bible. you are in a great part of osaka - many would say minami is osaka. have you checked out 新世界 , is it still the same? in 2001 it was still the utopia gone wrong : cinema's advertising john cassavetes' gloria (survival not revival), the plainest looking (kneelength wooolen skirt and polyester blouse) transsexual subculture that must have ever existed some spooky kabuki and lots more.
then cross the big road into 新今宮 walk a bit inwards and you'll find the time trip of your life. narrow red-light streets operating and looking like yoshiwara would have before the meiji restoration. no shit. these kind of places have been officially closed down some 150 years ago but trust osaka. actually not even many osaka people know about these (or would like not to know) so shhhhh!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Shinsekai / Tsutenkaku is our backyard (we're living up the hill near Tennoji station) and we often go to the "spooky kabuki" theatre there. In fact we're thinking of going tonight to the "fake Takarazuka" evening they're holding there. It's the most sordid, bastardised kabuki theatre I've seen, with the actors bursting into pop hits in the middle of plays, and stuffing 10,000 yen notes into their kimonos. And next door there's this totally empty fleapit porno cinema owned by the same people, with high-backed "privacy" loveseats. I've seen the tranny whores too, they're waiting right outside when you leave the kabuki theatre.

[klasensjo.livejournal.com]

12. Percentage of the time I found myself checking men's penises before their faces as they approached: 85%.

I knew it...and you wonder why audiences do the same at your gigs. Bah, humbug!
I want to skinny dip in a supersento too.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Percentage of sharks that will take your willy for their long-lost mother: 88%

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

ayy
wonderful.
beautiful.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

No need to ask!

[benchilada.livejournal.com]

Percent that I am stunned that somebody hasn't jumped all over you for this:
5. Little girls (aged 5-8, bathing with their fathers) are 50% sexy with their clothes on, but only 20% sexy naked = 78%

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

I'm with you there... 50% seems like a high number to toss out to something that you would not engage in some sort of intercourse with, but maybe the whole world is some %age sexy for our protagonist.

I'd be curious as to how sexy Hisae is, or how sexy the fried food he ate was, or the 85% of face-preceeding penises.

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

Wait... on second glance, you entered eight seperate "baths" in an hour? It's not a race, man.

Do you experience the same problem I do when I go to onsen with (japanese) women? When deciding on a preset time to meet up outside, I always want much longer in the baths than my companion. Or is the "obstacle course" hopping from bath to bath your normal m.o.?

[heinzbitte.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I just feel odd adding people without at least telling them.

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

yep. If you can't cover it with a bandaid, it's a no go.

Will momus rage against japan for insisting on a single fixed meaning of the sign "tatoo"? Not likely... those rants only apply when foreign people judge japan, not when japan judges foreign people.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It would be as monstrous to have sex with little girls as it would be to claim they're not sexy.

Clothes make little girls 30% more sexy because they emphasize their gender-specific attributes as small women (in other words, 50% scale replicas of grown women). Whereas little girls without clothes are somewhat androgynous, barely more sexy than any other young, clean, healthy naked human body.

I think part of our sexual response is conditioned by taboo, and what's very refreshing in Japan is that the hysterical attitude to children and sexuality that has prevailed in anglo-saxon countries recently (much less in France or Germany, where you'll often see children naked in parks or on beaches) is absent. Things forbidden or repressed get a power out of proportion to their importance.

It's interesting, someone once said that there are very few psychoanalysts in Japan because the unconscious here is totally on the surface of everyday life.

[pyrop.livejournal.com]

Percentage of bathers on the men's floor who were little girls while I was bathing

What, so they stopped being little girls once you left?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm pretty jumpy. Same in art galleries or museums, I do 'em quick. I now expect real life to go as fast as broadband!