Let's Get Naked...Part I
Well for those of you reading the blog thus far, I assume you’ve come to the logical conclusion that I’m a cultural imperialist who has no appreciation for other cultures or ways of life, and I came all the way to Japan for a new environment to booze and carouse in. Well, you’re only about 80% correct. I happen to appreciate other cultures for exactly what they are, crude imitations of the perfect culture of my people. I am man enough to admit it.
I will also offer a brief warning to those of you with weak stomachs, or umm…imaginations because there are never any pictures to accompany these blatherings. There will be an excessive amount of male nudity in this entry, accompanied by detailed descriptions of male nudity. There will be a tragic amount of male nudity, and no description of female nudity, for reasons that will be understood only if you make it past the male nudity. But enough of that, we have stories of bathing naked with hordes of Japanese men to get too.
We woke up sometime in the mid afternoon and decided to spend our waning daylight hours in Beppu, grab some food, and find an onsen to relax in. We drove back into town, and encountered massive traffic getting up into the mountain, where it seemed like all of the big onsens were smattered across the cityscape. We drove up the hill, and being in a particularly good mood, I put on the mantel of obnoxious American, screaming pointless slogans at passengers and passerby indiscriminately. I would shout things like, “It’s Golden Week! We’re on vacation!” or the obligatory “I’m on anti-biotics, bitch!”
We managed to park the car for free, in the parking lot of some illegible establishment, and wandered in search of food. Our heroes have had enough Denny’s (Joyful) for one city, and declared we would find a small out of the way restaurant and do our damndest to order something edible.
After we’d completely given up on that we decided to search for a chain restaurant with English menus, but we spied a really fat Japanese couple walking into a restaurant. To give you an idea of how rare this is, we’ll compare it to walking around a smallish city, say Albany, and seeing Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, the Pope, the Olsen Twins, and Satan walk into some hippy cafe together. Our rationale was that if fat people were eating there, then the food is probably good, and/or cheap and plentiful. Either of those would work for us, but it turned out to be the former.
We walked into a sushi hole in the wall – all of the fish was neatly arranged at the bar on ice. It was all incredibly fresh, and seemingly impossible for us to order. There were no pictures on the menu, and if anything familiar sounding like Tekka roll was written on the menu, we couldn’t read it in lines, dashes, and pacmans (katakana). So we walked up to the counter, and with the help of our portly patron companions, managed to point at fish in the glass and make up numbers for what we thought we wanted.
Me: ummm….the Tuna looking thing there *pointing*
Portly Pepperpot (male) – Ushkalushi?
Me: Hai (yes) Mitzu (three)
Me: and the uhh, salmon looking thing over there *pointing*
Portly Pepperpot (female) – Baklaitemu?
Me: Hai (yes) Yatzu? *shrugs shoulders* (4)
And so on and so fourth.
The chef didn’t make any sushi rolls, the ones you would recognized as small balls wrapped in rice, he made only sashimi, a chunk of fish sitting on top of some rice; but Holy God, Mother of Pearl, Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ was the fish incredible. We dipped the sashimi into some shoyu (soy sauce) and it just fell apart in your mouth and slid deliciously down your throat. It was by far the most unbelievable sushi any of us had ever had, maybe ever will have. I haven’t had anything like it anywhere else in Japan. We went back to the counter and pointed at another half dozen unpronounceable fish for bigger and bigger numbers of servings with the same result. We didn’t ask the price, we didn’t want a salad to go with it, we just ate and ate. We even out-ate the helpful fat people.
This would be the basic reason why we hate “Let’s Go”, and the prototypical travel books. “Let’s Go” would have told us to go to some tourist trap with decent food, where everyone has been before, but somehow fulfilled a tourist’s idea of the stereotypical experience they wanted to have in said country to bring back in the slideshow; but without the book we had stumbled onto one of the best meals of my life. That’s essentially what traveling is, coming to terms with your ignorance and taking chances that may enhance your life.
This is why not 3 hours from eating I would be sitting in a pool with 20 naked Japanese men…and enjoying myself.
So we’re going to have to break with the chronological order of the vacation and go into a dramatic flashback sequence…STAR WIPE! (for you Simpson’s fanatics)
The Saturday before we left for our epic, anti-biotical road trip we decided to go for a test run to an onsen, knowing full well the city of Beppu sported some of the best in the country. We were graciously given until 3 PM to begin our journey, as most of us we’re plastered from some even or other the evening before. We took two cars, between myself, El Charro, La Escueleta Corriente, El Angel Solo, El Jesus Aviendo, one of La Escueleta Corriente’s students, and an attractive Japanese girl from the office, who we will give an American name, let’s say Daphne.
We drove to Kasado Island, up a winding narrow road, past a giant painted Dinosaur, to Kasadojima – the Onsen of Kasado Island. So let me describe what an Onsen is a little bit. An Onsen is a Japanese public bath house essentially. Everyone inside is nude, and despite their cultural reservations toward sex and drugs, public nudity is a part of traditions that go back far longer than current societal reservations. An onsen is a place to relax, and unlike the spa culture in the US, it’s extremely cheap, only about 700 yen (7 bucks) and is supposed to be available to poor and wealthy Japanese alike. When we get to the counter of the Onsen we put our shoes in a little locker and don the Onsen slippers, we then get small tickets for a towel and general admission. At this point the guys and girls separate into our separate locker rooms.
Once the three of us walked into the lockroom, the game was officially afoot. I looked around nervously, there were two half-naked Japanese men getting ready to disrobe, and I couldn’t remember being this uncomfortable since the banker grabbed my ass my first day of work. El Jesus Aviendo looks at us, shrugs his shoulders, and says, “Well, let’s get naked.”
It was actually the perfect way to break the ice, and we brought him along because he knew how this whole shebang worked. So I took my clothes off, and opened the bag that had my towel in it. Let’s take a moment to describe the ball towel. It’s a small square towel, about the size of a hand towel in your bathroom, used expressly for the purpose of covering your genitals as your flapping around the onsen from one pool to the next. Usually the towels are monogrammed with the initials or name of the onsen, so you can amass a collection of tiny towels used to cover your penis from unwary Japanese gazes.
Before we can jump into a hot pool of water and splash each other and giggle though, we’ve got to scrub down. As soon as I walked into the Onsen area, with the pools of water and what not, I noticed a series of pink plastic stools near the walls, which were lined with mirrors and shower heads attached to cords. You have to “shower” before you enter the communal pools. So I plant my hairy ass (if there was any speculation let’s put that to bed now) in one of these stools, and in front of me are a bottle of soap and a bottle of shampoo. So, I threw the ball towel onto the shelf in front of me and went to town, all those remnant fumes of alcohol faded away and I readied myself for the plunge.
We rinsed off, gathered our respective ball towels and looked over our options. There was a pool inside, and a pool outside. We went outside. The pool was about twelve feet wide, five feet long, and about thigh high. We clambered in sat down and were treated to an amazing view of a chain of islands fading into lighter and lighter blues as they approached the horizon and the sun shouted a slim highway of bright light across the Pacific Ocean. We sat in awe of the scene for a good 15 minutes without a word passing between us, my mind wandered through the landscape of my life’s history, and plans for the future, visions of prophetic greatness rose from the depths of the empty closets of thought, and the world, and the naked men sitting next to me completely faded from view. That is until the entire universe that had gathered around me was shattered by some Japanese asshole in front of me. (Go ahead…read it again)
Speaking of Japanese asses, it would have been kind of awkward walking around a room holding a tiny towel in front of my dangling member, but luckily, the hairless skinny Japanese men have asses that closely resemble that of Japanese women so after a few minutes I had my own convenient towel rack…Alright, alright, I went a little too far, I’m pulling your leg there, getting an erection would have been not only horribly embarrassing but I think probably emotionally scarring as well. And most of the people in the onsen were over 60 so don’t worry about my masculinity, I’m good to go.
Kasadojima also sported a small sauna, so that was the next stop. Next to the sauna though, was a small pool of water slightly above freezing temperature. So we jumped into the cold water, shocked the body a little, then popped into the sauna for a spell, then jumped back into the cold water again, and then outside to the hot pool with a view. We repeated this process a couple times and then went out to the hot pool for the last time. It was hard to resist the urge to simply stand naked outside in the cool breeze overlooking the ocean. Eventually the three of us did succumb to the inherent human desire.
So picture for yourself, three hairy-assed (what are the chances) gaijin standing outside a Japanese bathhouse overlooking the sunset, in the pose of a 15th century Spanish explorer of the bow of his ship heading towards the new world. Or maybe a more colloquial picture would be three Captain Morgan’s standing naked at the top of an island in Japan. There was something unmistakably Rockwellian about it, maybe bizarre Rockwell. Three men standing with their right leg on a small boulder, eyes fixed in the distance, holding a small ball towel at their sides.
After our dramatic experience we dried off, got dressed and hiked around the onsen for a little bit before going home…
STAR FADE ! (back to the future…err…present…err months in the past)
I will also offer a brief warning to those of you with weak stomachs, or umm…imaginations because there are never any pictures to accompany these blatherings. There will be an excessive amount of male nudity in this entry, accompanied by detailed descriptions of male nudity. There will be a tragic amount of male nudity, and no description of female nudity, for reasons that will be understood only if you make it past the male nudity. But enough of that, we have stories of bathing naked with hordes of Japanese men to get too.
We woke up sometime in the mid afternoon and decided to spend our waning daylight hours in Beppu, grab some food, and find an onsen to relax in. We drove back into town, and encountered massive traffic getting up into the mountain, where it seemed like all of the big onsens were smattered across the cityscape. We drove up the hill, and being in a particularly good mood, I put on the mantel of obnoxious American, screaming pointless slogans at passengers and passerby indiscriminately. I would shout things like, “It’s Golden Week! We’re on vacation!” or the obligatory “I’m on anti-biotics, bitch!”
We managed to park the car for free, in the parking lot of some illegible establishment, and wandered in search of food. Our heroes have had enough Denny’s (Joyful) for one city, and declared we would find a small out of the way restaurant and do our damndest to order something edible.
After we’d completely given up on that we decided to search for a chain restaurant with English menus, but we spied a really fat Japanese couple walking into a restaurant. To give you an idea of how rare this is, we’ll compare it to walking around a smallish city, say Albany, and seeing Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, the Pope, the Olsen Twins, and Satan walk into some hippy cafe together. Our rationale was that if fat people were eating there, then the food is probably good, and/or cheap and plentiful. Either of those would work for us, but it turned out to be the former.
We walked into a sushi hole in the wall – all of the fish was neatly arranged at the bar on ice. It was all incredibly fresh, and seemingly impossible for us to order. There were no pictures on the menu, and if anything familiar sounding like Tekka roll was written on the menu, we couldn’t read it in lines, dashes, and pacmans (katakana). So we walked up to the counter, and with the help of our portly patron companions, managed to point at fish in the glass and make up numbers for what we thought we wanted.
Me: ummm….the Tuna looking thing there *pointing*
Portly Pepperpot (male) – Ushkalushi?
Me: Hai (yes) Mitzu (three)
Me: and the uhh, salmon looking thing over there *pointing*
Portly Pepperpot (female) – Baklaitemu?
Me: Hai (yes) Yatzu? *shrugs shoulders* (4)
And so on and so fourth.
The chef didn’t make any sushi rolls, the ones you would recognized as small balls wrapped in rice, he made only sashimi, a chunk of fish sitting on top of some rice; but Holy God, Mother of Pearl, Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ was the fish incredible. We dipped the sashimi into some shoyu (soy sauce) and it just fell apart in your mouth and slid deliciously down your throat. It was by far the most unbelievable sushi any of us had ever had, maybe ever will have. I haven’t had anything like it anywhere else in Japan. We went back to the counter and pointed at another half dozen unpronounceable fish for bigger and bigger numbers of servings with the same result. We didn’t ask the price, we didn’t want a salad to go with it, we just ate and ate. We even out-ate the helpful fat people.
This would be the basic reason why we hate “Let’s Go”, and the prototypical travel books. “Let’s Go” would have told us to go to some tourist trap with decent food, where everyone has been before, but somehow fulfilled a tourist’s idea of the stereotypical experience they wanted to have in said country to bring back in the slideshow; but without the book we had stumbled onto one of the best meals of my life. That’s essentially what traveling is, coming to terms with your ignorance and taking chances that may enhance your life.
This is why not 3 hours from eating I would be sitting in a pool with 20 naked Japanese men…and enjoying myself.
So we’re going to have to break with the chronological order of the vacation and go into a dramatic flashback sequence…STAR WIPE! (for you Simpson’s fanatics)
The Saturday before we left for our epic, anti-biotical road trip we decided to go for a test run to an onsen, knowing full well the city of Beppu sported some of the best in the country. We were graciously given until 3 PM to begin our journey, as most of us we’re plastered from some even or other the evening before. We took two cars, between myself, El Charro, La Escueleta Corriente, El Angel Solo, El Jesus Aviendo, one of La Escueleta Corriente’s students, and an attractive Japanese girl from the office, who we will give an American name, let’s say Daphne.
We drove to Kasado Island, up a winding narrow road, past a giant painted Dinosaur, to Kasadojima – the Onsen of Kasado Island. So let me describe what an Onsen is a little bit. An Onsen is a Japanese public bath house essentially. Everyone inside is nude, and despite their cultural reservations toward sex and drugs, public nudity is a part of traditions that go back far longer than current societal reservations. An onsen is a place to relax, and unlike the spa culture in the US, it’s extremely cheap, only about 700 yen (7 bucks) and is supposed to be available to poor and wealthy Japanese alike. When we get to the counter of the Onsen we put our shoes in a little locker and don the Onsen slippers, we then get small tickets for a towel and general admission. At this point the guys and girls separate into our separate locker rooms.
Once the three of us walked into the lockroom, the game was officially afoot. I looked around nervously, there were two half-naked Japanese men getting ready to disrobe, and I couldn’t remember being this uncomfortable since the banker grabbed my ass my first day of work. El Jesus Aviendo looks at us, shrugs his shoulders, and says, “Well, let’s get naked.”
It was actually the perfect way to break the ice, and we brought him along because he knew how this whole shebang worked. So I took my clothes off, and opened the bag that had my towel in it. Let’s take a moment to describe the ball towel. It’s a small square towel, about the size of a hand towel in your bathroom, used expressly for the purpose of covering your genitals as your flapping around the onsen from one pool to the next. Usually the towels are monogrammed with the initials or name of the onsen, so you can amass a collection of tiny towels used to cover your penis from unwary Japanese gazes.
Before we can jump into a hot pool of water and splash each other and giggle though, we’ve got to scrub down. As soon as I walked into the Onsen area, with the pools of water and what not, I noticed a series of pink plastic stools near the walls, which were lined with mirrors and shower heads attached to cords. You have to “shower” before you enter the communal pools. So I plant my hairy ass (if there was any speculation let’s put that to bed now) in one of these stools, and in front of me are a bottle of soap and a bottle of shampoo. So, I threw the ball towel onto the shelf in front of me and went to town, all those remnant fumes of alcohol faded away and I readied myself for the plunge.
We rinsed off, gathered our respective ball towels and looked over our options. There was a pool inside, and a pool outside. We went outside. The pool was about twelve feet wide, five feet long, and about thigh high. We clambered in sat down and were treated to an amazing view of a chain of islands fading into lighter and lighter blues as they approached the horizon and the sun shouted a slim highway of bright light across the Pacific Ocean. We sat in awe of the scene for a good 15 minutes without a word passing between us, my mind wandered through the landscape of my life’s history, and plans for the future, visions of prophetic greatness rose from the depths of the empty closets of thought, and the world, and the naked men sitting next to me completely faded from view. That is until the entire universe that had gathered around me was shattered by some Japanese asshole in front of me. (Go ahead…read it again)
Speaking of Japanese asses, it would have been kind of awkward walking around a room holding a tiny towel in front of my dangling member, but luckily, the hairless skinny Japanese men have asses that closely resemble that of Japanese women so after a few minutes I had my own convenient towel rack…Alright, alright, I went a little too far, I’m pulling your leg there, getting an erection would have been not only horribly embarrassing but I think probably emotionally scarring as well. And most of the people in the onsen were over 60 so don’t worry about my masculinity, I’m good to go.
Kasadojima also sported a small sauna, so that was the next stop. Next to the sauna though, was a small pool of water slightly above freezing temperature. So we jumped into the cold water, shocked the body a little, then popped into the sauna for a spell, then jumped back into the cold water again, and then outside to the hot pool with a view. We repeated this process a couple times and then went out to the hot pool for the last time. It was hard to resist the urge to simply stand naked outside in the cool breeze overlooking the ocean. Eventually the three of us did succumb to the inherent human desire.
So picture for yourself, three hairy-assed (what are the chances) gaijin standing outside a Japanese bathhouse overlooking the sunset, in the pose of a 15th century Spanish explorer of the bow of his ship heading towards the new world. Or maybe a more colloquial picture would be three Captain Morgan’s standing naked at the top of an island in Japan. There was something unmistakably Rockwellian about it, maybe bizarre Rockwell. Three men standing with their right leg on a small boulder, eyes fixed in the distance, holding a small ball towel at their sides.
After our dramatic experience we dried off, got dressed and hiked around the onsen for a little bit before going home…
STAR FADE ! (back to the future…err…present…err months in the past)
posted by Just1Wheat at
6:58 PM
