Water better than drugs
Sep. 1st, 2004 09:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusIf the hot-and-cold water experience of visiting a Japanese public bath-house were a drug, which one would it be? A calming drug like valium, or a pick-me-up like speed? An anti-depressant or an empathy drug? The Guardian reported recently that so many people in Britain are being prescribed Prozac that it's now building up in the nation's water supply. What the British don't seem to realise is that the Prozac in the water is just the icing on the cake. Water itself, used correctly, can banish all forms of depression. It's the new drugs.
To celebrate my last night in Osaka before my week in Hong Kong, Hisae took me to a sento (public bath-house) near Bishoen Station, a short walk from where we're staying. This sento is also an onsen, a natural hot spring bubbling up from volcanic sources in the rocks beneath. It's in the cheery, slightly sleazy commercial district beside the station, and has a dilapidated charm. We paid $3.50 each, agreed to meet in forty minutes, put our shoes in lockers, took a wooden peg, and went through the doors marked 'Men' and 'Women'.
I wish I could have taken my camera inside, because the place was beautiful. It had a Showa era flavour. It felt public and institutional and run-down, but also cheerful, with elegant detailing. I folded my clothes into another locker, took the key, my 'modesty towel' and a bar of soap, and slid open the door to the great hall, the hammam. And there, cascading all around like pleasure itself, was the 'drug': hot, clean, fresh water. Sitting on a little plastic seat in front of a mirror at the edge of the room, I washed vigourously, soaping up, splashing buckets of water over my head, showering. With all impurities removed from my forehead, armpits, genitals I stowed soap and towel in a corner (I'm never quite sure where to keep the towel when bathing; some Japanese men wrap it around their heads like a bandana) and advanced past the cupid fountain and up into the multi-level bath itself. Hot water poured in from a series of ornamentally twisted pipes, cascading through bamboo tubes and spilling over the edge into lower-level baths, each about five metres across. I sank onto the seat, enjoying the embrace of the scalding, just-bearable water, then sank deeper, settling on a lower ledge. The room was full of naked strangers, fat and thin Japanese men scrubbing themselves, snorting like hippos, conversing as they showered. Square art deco pillars supported the ceiling, sporting a pleasing 'ceramic bamboo' motif. Tokyo sentos often have murals featuring frescoes of nature (lakes, mountains), but the Osaka style is more restrained and functional. Just lots of tiles, fluorescent chandeliers, and the odd cupid.
It was time to sample other types of water. I made for a cubicle with reddish lighting. A fine spray and piped muzak greeted me as I entered. The bubbling pool was at an intermediate temperature, and faced a window. Country onsens frame views of nature in their windows. This one, encircled with ivy, showed the platform of Bishoen's elevated railway. I bobbed on bubbles awhile, letting them massage my lower back. Then it was time for a sauna -- so ferociously hot, it scorched the lungs to breathe, and sweat poured into my towel. Six minutes of that were all I could take. Outside the sauna was a brown pool -- the electric pool! A continuous low voltage electric current infuses the oxydised water, giving it massage-like properties. I dipped a finger in but couldn't feel anything. Nevertheless, this was an adventure too far. Deep taboos on mixing water with electricity (and distant memories of the horrible death of French disco star Claude Francois) kept me out of the brown pool of death. I made for the cold pool and slowly, slowly, submerged myself. My lungs felt crispy-tipped, my head dizzy. Would I faint? Could I breathe? Would I catch fever? Didn't Finns, diving into cold lakes directly after sauna, their bellies full of lunch, often die of heart attacks?
I survived, gentle reader, took one more dip in the bubble pool, another soak in the hot spilly bath (how I wished I had a wet bunko paperback to hold aloft from the water and peruse, as I've seen some Japanese gentlemen do!), showered again by the wall, then took a body-jet horizontal shower in the tile stall. When I emerged, a gorgeous young Adonis was standing naked beside my bag. The Bishoen bishonen looked startled to see a gaijin emerging from the shower, and more startled still to see me approaching him and bending down beside his shower to pick up my belongings. I slid open the door to the dressing room, towelled down, slipped my clothes back on, and sat for a few minutes in a charming 1960s massage chair which, for 20 yen, jiggled two spinal prongs you could move manually up and down your back, manipulating a big mechanical wheel on the side of the chair.
I was sipping cold green tea under the paper lanterns at the sento door, regarding the waning yellow moon, when Hisae rejoined me, her hair straggly and wet. 'How do you feel?' she asked. 'Great!' And I really did.
Water. Better than drugs.
To celebrate my last night in Osaka before my week in Hong Kong, Hisae took me to a sento (public bath-house) near Bishoen Station, a short walk from where we're staying. This sento is also an onsen, a natural hot spring bubbling up from volcanic sources in the rocks beneath. It's in the cheery, slightly sleazy commercial district beside the station, and has a dilapidated charm. We paid $3.50 each, agreed to meet in forty minutes, put our shoes in lockers, took a wooden peg, and went through the doors marked 'Men' and 'Women'.
I wish I could have taken my camera inside, because the place was beautiful. It had a Showa era flavour. It felt public and institutional and run-down, but also cheerful, with elegant detailing. I folded my clothes into another locker, took the key, my 'modesty towel' and a bar of soap, and slid open the door to the great hall, the hammam. And there, cascading all around like pleasure itself, was the 'drug': hot, clean, fresh water. Sitting on a little plastic seat in front of a mirror at the edge of the room, I washed vigourously, soaping up, splashing buckets of water over my head, showering. With all impurities removed from my forehead, armpits, genitals I stowed soap and towel in a corner (I'm never quite sure where to keep the towel when bathing; some Japanese men wrap it around their heads like a bandana) and advanced past the cupid fountain and up into the multi-level bath itself. Hot water poured in from a series of ornamentally twisted pipes, cascading through bamboo tubes and spilling over the edge into lower-level baths, each about five metres across. I sank onto the seat, enjoying the embrace of the scalding, just-bearable water, then sank deeper, settling on a lower ledge. The room was full of naked strangers, fat and thin Japanese men scrubbing themselves, snorting like hippos, conversing as they showered. Square art deco pillars supported the ceiling, sporting a pleasing 'ceramic bamboo' motif. Tokyo sentos often have murals featuring frescoes of nature (lakes, mountains), but the Osaka style is more restrained and functional. Just lots of tiles, fluorescent chandeliers, and the odd cupid.
It was time to sample other types of water. I made for a cubicle with reddish lighting. A fine spray and piped muzak greeted me as I entered. The bubbling pool was at an intermediate temperature, and faced a window. Country onsens frame views of nature in their windows. This one, encircled with ivy, showed the platform of Bishoen's elevated railway. I bobbed on bubbles awhile, letting them massage my lower back. Then it was time for a sauna -- so ferociously hot, it scorched the lungs to breathe, and sweat poured into my towel. Six minutes of that were all I could take. Outside the sauna was a brown pool -- the electric pool! A continuous low voltage electric current infuses the oxydised water, giving it massage-like properties. I dipped a finger in but couldn't feel anything. Nevertheless, this was an adventure too far. Deep taboos on mixing water with electricity (and distant memories of the horrible death of French disco star Claude Francois) kept me out of the brown pool of death. I made for the cold pool and slowly, slowly, submerged myself. My lungs felt crispy-tipped, my head dizzy. Would I faint? Could I breathe? Would I catch fever? Didn't Finns, diving into cold lakes directly after sauna, their bellies full of lunch, often die of heart attacks?
I survived, gentle reader, took one more dip in the bubble pool, another soak in the hot spilly bath (how I wished I had a wet bunko paperback to hold aloft from the water and peruse, as I've seen some Japanese gentlemen do!), showered again by the wall, then took a body-jet horizontal shower in the tile stall. When I emerged, a gorgeous young Adonis was standing naked beside my bag. The Bishoen bishonen looked startled to see a gaijin emerging from the shower, and more startled still to see me approaching him and bending down beside his shower to pick up my belongings. I slid open the door to the dressing room, towelled down, slipped my clothes back on, and sat for a few minutes in a charming 1960s massage chair which, for 20 yen, jiggled two spinal prongs you could move manually up and down your back, manipulating a big mechanical wheel on the side of the chair.
I was sipping cold green tea under the paper lanterns at the sento door, regarding the waning yellow moon, when Hisae rejoined me, her hair straggly and wet. 'How do you feel?' she asked. 'Great!' And I really did.
Water. Better than drugs.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-31 05:37 pm (UTC)And water is indeed glorious. I've taken up swimming, inspired by my dog's obvious delight in the river at the park.
Upon your return
Date: 2004-08-31 05:50 pm (UTC)Maybe you have a different address now.I was trying to tell you about the Nobukazu Takamura show at Apple store on Sunday, but it looks like you were in Kyushu anyway.
When you get back to Osaka, could I take you out for a coffee or meal?
While looking up your e-mail address I found that you left a comment about my request for an interview almost a year ago on my blog http://bug.fotopages.com . I never knew about your positive response till last week, so my apologies for not continueing the exchange.....you asked Through words or pictures? I say, how about food or drink?
Enjoy Hong Kong, I look forward to reading more from you. ps. I might not be able to take you to Sento because I have tattoos..... I can't join gyms or pools because of that (unless I sneak) matane oh, one other thing, have you noticed the difference in Kanto and kansai dialects?
Re: Upon your return
Date: 2004-08-31 06:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-31 05:53 pm (UTC)onsen nonsense
Date: 2004-08-31 10:13 pm (UTC)-Samuel
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-01 01:26 am (UTC)erik
rotterdam
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-01 01:57 am (UTC)You really will have to read 'Some Prefer Nettles' - the gap between Osaka and Tokyo is one of its central themes.
Ofuroyasan
Date: 2004-09-01 05:36 am (UTC)Alot of the geshoku (lit. 'digs') in Kyoto don't have baths
which means there's usually at least one sento in each cho
(neighbourhood) and often more than one.
Each of these has it's one flavour. The most famous is
Funaokaonsen, not far from Daitokuji. Thereäs nearly as many baths in Kyoto as there are temples.
Another in Gojorakuen (a kind of yakuza prostitution area across the river from Gion) has a sento where nearly everyone has a full body tatoo.
Have you tried the 'kampoyaku' medicine bath or 'hyakuso' 100 grasses baths?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-01 06:54 am (UTC)I presume you've experimented with the colourful spectrum of narcotics before coming to this conclusion?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-01 08:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-01 09:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-05 03:37 am (UTC)Let me testify to that
Date: 2004-09-10 02:14 am (UTC)Onsen-soaking has been among the most precious activities I’ve taken up in Japan. It is liberating, relaxing, calming, invigorating, life-extending, transcendent, decadent, healthy, swishy, and sometimes even hard-core. When I first began visiting them I was a little uncomfortable. I would find excuses not to. This was probably because of my ancestral American Puritanism; fear of nudity and embarrassment.
However, about a year ago I was having a thorny time all by my lonesome in the Japanese countryside. I was living in a wonderful and bucolic little rice field town with no train line, but I myself was askew somehow, too much of the wrong kind of humor in my blood. After a few months of pointless vexing, sleeping poorly, and dark moods; I began visiting the onsens regularly. Supplements and other ad-hoc remedies had failed. Within a month, I was revived and set straight. Everyday felt like my birthday. I began to wonder if I were aging in reverse.
Now, if a mere one or two days go by and I don’t have my water fix, I begin to fidget. My mouth dries. My vision seems to dim. I feel uglier somehow. I even de-realize things around me; the world becoming fuzzy and uninteresting, less exceptional. But all I need to do is get back into those sweet volcanic waters! If water is indeed a drug, I guess I’m behaving like an addict. Lately, I’ve been making frequent three hour train trips back out to the country expressly to visit my old onsen haunts, my old routines: warm and bubbly –to- scalding, wide and still –to- small, sublime and freezing –to- the sauna, my skin still covered in goose bumps from the cold pool; then back to the cold, then repeat, and repeat again.
I’ve only moved to the Tokyo metropolis in the last month, so I’ve been sampling the dips voraciously, trying to pin down my perfect prescription. In the country, I could be more than satisfied with a simple sento, so Tokyo, with its peppermint baths, massages, electro-shock pools, and indoor mud burials; seems like heaven on Earth. And I can go to a different Onsen for every day of the week!
I feel that the cold pool is the climax of any Onsen routine, either that or throwing yourself into a pile of snow near an outdoor bath. The cold pool requires your body to be prepared by every other pool and stage. I stay in until I sense my brain cells popping off happily into nothingness, until I can’t feel a temperature at all, until my breath has become so slight and discrete that the surface of the water is as still as glass. The Onsen was the first place I was able to practice zazen with any regularity or “success”. Bones tied up in zazen; blood and brain slowed down by water – the will is pliant. Or, at least, rapid variations of blood pressure, near-hypothermia, and just about fainting from the heat tends to create the illusion that I am being ‘mindful’ in the zen sense. I guess that’s cheating, but it feels swell.
Intentionally confusing water recreation with zen training is a fabulous error I recommend to anyone who is so inclined.
Also...
Date: 2004-09-10 02:16 am (UTC)Re: Also...
Date: 2004-11-07 11:26 pm (UTC)