Hot and steamy - just the way we love our Japanese sento baths. Does the thought of getting nude with the neighbors or starkers with strangers in your local sento, or public bath, raise a smile or make you cringe? Whatever your personal take, most reading this will be aware the process of bathing in true Japanese form has long been a communal, often social, activity. Even so, it's still one part of traditional life that can put some visitors, and nowadays Japanese too, on edge. Still, if you're not too far on the shy side, we recommend you swallow your pride, understand that your own bits and pieces are of little interest to anyone else and take off the towel.
To most Japanese people, sento are a thing of the past, born of an era when houses did not have their own bathrooms in the decades and centuries up to around 1970.Records show that on the morning of September 1, 1923, there were an estimated 2,800 sento in Tokyo alone. Just two days later, following the biggest quake to hit the city in living memory, that number was down to around 400, with the rest having gone up in flames. Today, the number is back up to 1,200 or so in the immediate Tokyo area, with nationwide numbers estimated at anywhere up to 7,000, depending on who you ask.
Clearly, then, there's still a call for the old local bathhouse. Naughty. No towels allowed in the water.So, what's the best way to get yourself clean, enjoy the experience and then leave a sento without causing offense? Get naked. Do it, don't think about it, and don't worry; nobody is looking. Note - only do this once inside the correct changing room. All public baths are segregated by gender. Just in case you were wondering. Armed with a small hand towel for modesty's sake, as well as your toiletries, head into the main bath area and deposit yourself on a plastic stool in front of one of the personal washing spaces. There is usually a mirror on the wall, a shower nozzle and hot and cold taps. Rinse off any dirt and grime with water at a temperature you feel comfortable with. Use body soap, shampoo and rinse off every single last sud on your body or in your hair. Repeat at will but make sure the suds are gone once you've finished.
Head to your bath of choice and get in slowly. Make sure the towel does not enter the bath. Balancing it on the edge of the bath is fine, as is on the top of your head.When ready, get out, rinse and try a different bath. Nothing to it. The noren split curtain lets you know you're in for an old-school scrub.Yen. You won't need a lot - ?450 (US$5.75) is the standard charge in almost all sento for anyone over the age of 12, ?180 for kids over six and ?80 for the mites.
Post-dip, all sento have vending machines or refrigerators with soft drinks and beer. Bet your bathroom and home can't match that.
Towels, toiletries. Best to take your own toiletries to the sento in a bag, otherwise you'll have to lay out a few more yen for shampoo and soap as well as towel rental. Off-color water. Many older sento in the Tokyo area use water pumped up from deep below the surface, whose color is naturally yellow or black depending on the area. Some sento even have water with a reddish tinge and small black flecks in the water. All is quite natural and the result of mineral deposits. Closing days. There are no set rules governing days off, but most sento are closed one day a week - it'll be posted, along with operating hours, outside the main door. Now you know what you're doing, in theory, it's time to head to your first sento.
Our best baths follow, with no apologies for six of the seven being on the east side of the city - the working-class, so-called "downtown" area, still alive, well and packed with sento. Resident koi are the only ones not in hot water at Takara-yu.A lovely sento in the backstreets of Senju, near the Arakawa River, Takara-yu, like others in the area, has a carving of the Seven Lucky Gods of Buddhism above its main entrance and an ever-present ready-to-fire bow and arrow dangling off to the left.
Herb and radium baths are available and on the men's aide a small Japanese garden with resident koi carp can be viewed while cooling down after bathing. Not a temple, but the elegant Daikoku-yu.Daikoku-yu is a regular on Japanese television shows and is one of the more striking sento in Tokyo.
Its street facing fa?ade looks like it could have been removed from a temple, and paneled scenes from Japanese history adorn the ceilings of the changing rooms. Perhaps the highlight is the wooden indoor and outdoor tubs that always surprise and delight first-time bathers.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")