Cathedrals of the Flesh (22 page)

'Hai, hai, hai,'
said an older woman next to me, laughing.

A woman closer to my age, sitting in the adjacent tub, whispered, 'It is a little cooler in this tub.' I crossed the divide.
I wouldn't exactly say it was a relief, but the water was slightly more tolerable.

'Arigato gozaimasu,'
I said, a polite form of'thank you' in Japanese.

'You like onsen?' she asked in a soft, willowy voice. Her accent sounded almost British.

'You speak English?'

'Yes, I spent many years abroad with my husband. He works for a plastics company and we lived in London. Is this the first
onsen you visit?'

'Yes, my very first. I thought onsen were for long soaks. Are all onsen this hot?' Next to me I noticed a woman in her seventies,
hair wrapped carefully in layers of diaphanous hairnets, easing into the hotter tub and placing a small sand dial next to
her. She was going to measure her soak in grains of sand.

'This onsen is special for Eddoko. In this part of Tokyo, Shita­machi, we take bath extra hot. Oh, forgive my rudeness, my
name is Ayako. What is yours?'

'Alexia. It's very nice to meet you. I've only been in Tokyo for two days, but I am realizing how rare it is to meet someone
who speaks fluent English.'

'Yes, it's a problem. We learn it in school so everyone can read English, but the schools don't teach how to speak it, and
of course Japanese people are very shy to do anything that they cannot do perfectly.' That explained a lot. Meanwhile I watched
incredulously as the woman I'd come in with dunked her one-year-old baby. I expected cries, but instead he cooed in delight
and splashed around in the black water.

'Ayako, why is this water the color of grape soda?'

'Yes, it is unusual. This used to be just a normal city sento, or so the story goes, but the water bills were making the owner
poor, so he began to drill for natural onsen water. Everyone thought it was silly, especially in Tokyo, since there is not
much onsen water here, but at five hundred meters he hit this black water. At first he thought it was useless because it's
not the normal color for onsen water. But then he had it analyzed and found that it has thirteen different minerals and cures
everything from rheumatism to heat rash to obesity. Now he is a very rich man.'

'So hitting onsen water is like striking oil.'

'Maybe,' she said, contemplating my sensationalist analogy.

Ayako and I were both feeling light-headed and drugged. We wandered over to the showers to cool off.

'Are you a regular here?' I asked as we both threw buckets of cold water over our shoulders.

'I live uptown, but my mother lives in Asakusa, so when I visit her I sometimes stop here to enjoy the water. It gives me
energy.'

'Are there many wonderful sentos to visit in Tokyo?'

'The old neighborhoods still have traditional sentos, though many have closed down or modernized, adding a gym facility or
a karaoke room. If you want to visit a place where sentos are still a big part of life, you must go to Kyoto. Kyoto is a more
traditional, spiritual city.'

'How so?'

'We have a popular joke that shows the difference,' she began. 'Imagine a huge temple made of solid gold. It is a beautiful
place, and there are many tourists inside. The tourist from Tokyo wonders how the temple was constructed, who designed it,
and when it was built. The tourist from Osaka tries to calculate how much money the gold is worth . . .' She paused for effect.
'And the tourist from Kyoto just worships.'

We sat in worshipful silence for a few minutes. I noticed an official notarized document framed on the wall. The Onsen Association,
which categorizes all the types of thermal waters in Japan, had classified Rokuryu as 'sodium hydrogen-carbonate' water. Onsen
authentication is serious business. Onsen owners must disclose the exact temperature of the water when it comes out of the
ground, how much it is heated, and whether or not they add any minerals to the
yu
(hot water). Some sentos, in order to market themselves, boast 'onsen' baths where they add special mineral salts to the bath.
Indeed, these kinds of bath salts are popular all over Japan, Ayako explained as we slipped into another, smaller tub with
cooler, clear water.

'At night I will ask my husband if he wants Beppu, Atami, or Nagano bath,' she said, naming three of the premier onsen destinations.

'Oh, so you have bath salts from each of those places?'

'Yes, you can buy these salts in Tokyo or when you visit onsen in other cities.'

'So after this bath you will go home and fix your husband a bath?'

'Yes,' she answered shyly.

'Japanese women prepare baths for their husbands?' I asked, struggling with this concept.

'Yes, every night. He's out working, and I'm a lazy housewife.' She laughed innocently.

'Do you want to work?'

'Not really. You see, I am of a strange, in-between generation. My younger sister works, and she lives at home. She doesn't
really want to get married and take care of a man.'

I had read about this phenomenon of young Japanese women who live at home well into their twenties and thirties. The Japanese
even coined a special name for this large demographic group, which translates as 'parasite singles.' Because they live at
home, housed and fed by their parents, virtually all their income is disposable, and they almost single-handedly keep Louis
Vuitton and Michael Kors in business. This generation of women consciously resists marriage and all its inherent sacrifices
and caretaking responsibilities in Japanese society.

Ayako continued, 'But I was never raised to work. I was raised to get married. When I was twenty-two the matchmaker began
to set up meetings for me and my husband. He was my second meeting, but he had met over seventy girls before me. When I was
your age it was considered very bad if you weren't married by twenty-five. An unmarried woman over twenty-five was called
"Christmas cake the day after Christmas."'

I leaned my head back in the tub and wondered if there were Japanese translations of Gloria Steinem. I tried to imagine Marina
or myself as dutiful wives drawing baths for our husbands. No, we'd have a hamam to wash strangers, but our husbands would
be on their own.

'Ayako, do you have a favorite onsen?' I asked, changing the subject.

After some deliberation, she revealed: 'It is a place high in the Gumma mountains, very remote, very obscure, called Takaragawa.'

'Takaragawa! That is Mr Miyake's favorite onsen also.'

'Mr. Miyake?'

'The only other Japanese person I know.'

That reminded me: they were picking me up for dinner in an hour and a half, and a confusing subway ride still lay between
me and the Asia Center. So after soaking for an hour with Ayako, we exchanged phone numbers, agreeing to visit another Tokyo
sento together and maybe do some shopping in Ginza. She was delightful, and her fluent English was a gift from the gods.

At 8:00 on the dot, a minivan of art dealers came to collect me at the Asia Center. It was a veritable UN of aesthetes - a
Japanese, a South American, a Frenchman, and a Belgian; I was the token American and girl. Most of us were too jet-lagged
to have a conversation any more sophisticated than an ongoing stream of Belgian jokes. Max, an Argentinean, and Philippe's
best friend, began with, 'Let me present the attributes of a modern European. He combines the moral courage of the French,
the fighting spirit of the Italians, the work ethic of the British, and the sense of humor of the Germans. In short, a Belgian.'
Philippe rolled his eyes and put his arm around me.

We arrived in good spirits at Fuku-sushi, a fashionable Rappongi sushi restaurant with gleaming navy tables and lavender accent
lights. As we entered the dining room, we were greeted by a deafening chorus of
'Irashaimase!'
from the five sushi chefs behind the long counter.
Irashaimase
means roughly 'Welcome,' and the louder it is said, the greater the sign of respect. Since Mizuo was a regular at Fuku-sushi,
we got the high-decibel Broadway version. A lacquered tray of sushi arrived: an enormous assortment of buttery pieces of fish,
teriyaki eel, heaps of salty red caviar, and foamy sea urchin atop small lumps of lightly vinegared rice. No California rolls
or crabstick rolls - in fact, no rolls at all. Just huge pieces of the freshest catch from Tsukiji, the world's largest fish
market.

With his round, dimpled face and gentle, questioning blue eyes, Max looked like a Buddhist monk in an Italian suit. Max had
lived and worked in Tokyo for eight years and had become as assimilated as a foreigner in Japan is allowed. As Donald Richie,
the foremost writer on postwar Japan, pointed out, 'Shortly, however, the visitor discovered that Japan insisted that he keep
his distance . . . though he desired intimacy, Japan was gently teaching him to keep his distance.' This ultimately was Max's
experience. Though he spoke nearly flawless Japanese, understood and abided by all Japanese proclivities, and had visited
the sento every evening when he lived in a six-tatami room in Tokyo, he would always be a gaijin.

'I had a tiny apartment, and if I took a bath at home, I'd have to sit like this,' he explained, pulling his legs tightly
to his chest in demonstration. 'So every night I went to the sento with friends, and of course I made sento friends as well.
At the sento you can see all the
yakuzi,
the Mafia guys, who are covered from head to toe in the most insane tattoos.'

'The Japanese are very romantic about baths,' I mused.

'Yes, very much so. The Japanese still romanticize the
furo
of old, the tub made out of
hinoki
wood, a fragrant wood considered sacred. I guess it's cedar in English. And of course the Japanese never varnish everything.
Don't mess with nature. So the tubs become silky to touch when the wood ages.'

'And what's this thing called skinship?' I asked.

'Ahh.' Max smiled and took another sip of sake. 'That's a more metaphorical romanticism about the baths. There's an expression,
Hadaka no tsukiai,
which means "Companions in nudity" or "Naked association." The idea is that by sharing the same bath and bathwater, you do
away with all the normal social barriers in life and can forge closer bonds. Occasionally I also hear the expression "Bath
friends are best friends," and it's true that the atmosphere of the bath makes possible a closeness rarely experienced otherwise
in Japanese life.'

As it turned out, locating old, traditional sentos involved hours of sleuthing — looking for clues like tall, slender chimneys,
asking for directions, and waiting for twenty minutes while an old woman with no vocal cords lovingly drew a detailed map
of Kita-ku, a rough Tokyo suburb. Sentos, I was discovering, are the poor cousins of onsen, using normal tap water instead
of mineral-infused curative water, serving city dwellers in need of a bath instead of vacationers in search of a soak. The
sento, once a vital urban institution, today fumbles for respectability and survival, but still I searched daily for still-functioning
reincarnations of the rowdy Edo period sentos.

I quickly found that the sentos in Tokyo's outer suburbs were best, but Kyoto was continually invoked as the place to experience
old-fashioned sento life. Kyoto apartments and
machiyas
were still small and cramped and lacked adequate plumbing such that many Kyotoites visited the sento for their nightly bath.

So I made a plan. Rather than risk disappointment at another Tokyo sento with recently installed karaoke bar or gym wing (blasphemy!),
I decided to cut my losses, activate my J&R rail pass, and check out Hakone before setting off for Kyoto.

Only one hundred kilometers away, Hakone is Tokyo's not-so-secret garden and most convenient onsen getaway. Mt Fuji, or Fujisan,
as the Japanese affectionately refer to their highest peak, is visible on a clear day, furthering Hakone's appeal. Despite
the crowds that Hakone draws, it was a huge relief to let down my city guard, to smell the azaleas, see mountainsides of trees,
and adopt a more provincial pace.

I expected a single Hakone train stop, with a
Hobbit-style
signpost directing bath-seeking Bilbos to one of the town's spectacular onsen — a straightforward system with painted wood
postings that read, 'Backaches this way,' 'Depression and anemia that way.' But Hakone was a sprawling destination, dotting
several mountain ridges and running for several train stops. I got off at Hakone-Yumoto, the most popular stop, and walked
two miles up the side of a mountain to the Tenzan onsen.

The Tenzan-noten-buro is the bath junkie's ultimate pleasure complex, surrounded by bamboo groves and pine trees. Inside the
dark-wooded tatami wonderland, I unlaced my shoes for the eight hundredth time, cursing myself for not bringing slip-ons to
Japan. The bath fee, even at a place as remote and upscale as this onsen, was still under $8. I wanted to wander around, exploring
the tatami recesses of the long passages and hidden alcoves, but the Japanese are helpful to a fault, and I was whisked straight
back to the women's onsen area, bypassing the massage area, cafés, a mysterious room of sleeping bodies, and what I like to
imagine was an opium den but was probably just a VIP lounge for tea ceremonies.

Again I found myself in a changing room, taking off my clothes in front of strangers, wondering how this mountainside onsen
would compare to the Tokyo sentos. The shower room, a wooden, steamy-windowed cube, had not one synthetic object. The stools,
the shelves, and the buckets for washing were all constructed of light, fragrant cedar. The foggy windows peered out onto
the most enchanting and aesthetically perfect bath scene I'd encountered. The Japanese, I was realizing, possessed the rare
ability to improve on nature. The outdoor pavilion of four hot pools was fenced off from the men's side by a thick grove of
six-foot green bamboo stalks. The rock-hewn pools, shaped like amorphously floating continents, boasted sodium chloride thermal
water, which is said to cure every conceivable malady. This water inspired sixteenth-century Edo dwellers to walk for three
days straight, over fifty miles along the Tokaido Road, to soak in Hakone's pools. Even early visitors from France, where
water has never been trusted, got over their fears in the late nineteenth century and discovered the pleasures of onsen bathing
in Hakone-Yumoto.