KVG Revival -
Originally published in KVG September, 1987
Text by Cynthia Fagen, Illustration by Michael Hoffman
One very hot summer day a few days after I arrived in Kyoto, my friend
Trisha, a sculptor who settled here two years ago, was waiting for me to finish a deliciously oily bowl of unagi (eel) on rice and a cup of cold ocha (tea). I smacked my lips with the insatiable appetite of a tourist. “What’s next,” I asked, turning in the direction of the sushi bar. Trisha’s marble blue eyes cracked with pleasure. “How about a bath,” she suggested. “I already took one,” I said defensively, wondering if the high noon heat affecting me more than I knew.
I thought of the fast-forward pace that has reduced Americans’sensuous pleasure to take-out restaurants and three-minute showers, and was pleasantly surprised when told we were going to the sento, a bathers’ gathering place where we could spend hours. “Would we be out before dinner?” I asked, eyeing the dancing shrimp behind the chilled glass counter. “If you want,” Trisha replied pushing me past the fat fatty tuna rolls, past the cooks with their hearty shouts of “Arigato (Thank you)” and out the door.
We bicycled up Kitaoji Street in the direction of the Golden Temple and stopped at a sign in kanji (Chinese characters) that looked like a threepronged fire. At the front entrance I was reminded to take my shoes off. Trisha waved her arms like a general leading the troops and we went into the women’s door on the right. I was greeted by a counterwoman perched behind a cash register. I paid a mere ¥230, bought a towel and was shown to a wall of a pigeon holes to store my clothes.
There were about a dozen women in the carpeted front parlour. Most middle-aged or older, all were comfortably naked, either dressing or attending to their toiletries in the mirror. Trisha’s roommate, Jenny, an Australian, joined us to share in the fun of watching me make the discovery they too had once made. Along the banks of the walls I squatted on a low little plastic stool facing a mirrored panel. A whitehaired woman, beautiful in her age, moved aside to allow us to sit next to each other. To my right there were three small blue pools, one near scalding, another mentholated, and the third Jenny told me, a surprise.
I turned the ankle high hot and cold water taps on and filled the wash basin. I lifted it high over my head and poured; one young woman with the stretch marks of childbirth on her stomach offered me her scented soap. I repeated the same baptismal motions over and over, lathering way the jetlag, slowing down my frenetic traveler’s pace to where I could relax like the other woman in the special sento society. I looked at the queue of naked backs, straight and crooked, and saw how my taller tanned skin stuck out. But it was woman only in here and it didn’t matter.
I spent too much time in the sauna glued to a children’s afternoon cartoon show that was on TV in the small wood room. Light headed, I dipped into a vat of chilling water outside the sauna, pinching my skin with cold. I padded to the mentholated tub and breathed in the heavy sharp odor. A woman watched how I moved cautiously into each pool, acclaiming to the extreme temperatures. The last tub however, the surprise, had yet to be tested. The crowd, who had refrained from staring at this novice, now had their eyes turned on me. I stepped into the mystery pool. It was jolted, literally. A pulse of fine, low electricity was racing through the water. Good for the arthritis, one lady advised me. “Yeah, great,” I told her, “but I don’t want to get electrocuted,” and scooted out. Everyone laughed.
Back inside the dressing area, I thudded onto a weight scale; luckily it was in metrics and I can’t convert. The three old chatterboxes still holding court in the corner rushed up to read my weight. “Oh no, no, no,” I waved my hand. “Dozo (please),”I said, asking her instead of instead to take my place. She waved a “No, Thank you,” and we all laughed at my height, making wild gestures in the air. Was it hours or minutes since I’d arrived here? I couldn’t tell, but when the three of us stepped outside to an orange sky, my stomach grumbled and I knew those dancing shrimps were just waiting to be eaten.