My first sento experience.

What is a sento you ask? It’s a Japanese “public” bathhouse. That’s right…PUBLIC!!

That’s the reason I hadn’t ever been to one in my almost 7 years in a country very famous for them. But, I’ll be the first to say it was a very nice experience, I enjoyed it thoroughly and I’ll go back again I’m sure.

After a night on the drink with good company (my mate Gordon) he decided it was time for my first experience at a Japanese ONSEN. I was reluctant but he ended up getting his way. So we went up the road from my place to the new joint called SACHINOYU. SACHI 幸 means BLESSING and YU 湯 means HOT WATER.

It was all very nice and new and all the trimmings. We paid our 500 yen and we were off.

The men and women are separated of course and no sooner had I walked through the door that all….and I mean ALL….my inhibitions were blown well and truly out the window. To put it bluntly, there were naked dudes everywhere. I tried to avert my eyes but no, there was a naked guy there too. I looked away, nope another naked guy was right there too. I gave up in the end and gave in to the fact that this place was just going to be wall to wall with naked guys. The most amazing thing was nobody cared.

All shapes and sizes. Tall, short, fat, skinny, young, old….all sorts. I always thought it would just be full of young muscly guys sitting around flexing but I was wrong. Most of the guys there were oldish and very out of shape. So I whipped my gear off and covered what I could with the small towel provided and headed into the steamy beyond.

We first sat in a bath with some old guys who looked like they’d been there a good while. It was hot but not too hot. Not like when you were little and got in the bath so hot you couldn’t actually register if it was hot or cold, but pretty warm. We were there for about 10 minutes and then like most others we felt the need to try something else so we went outside. Outside it was about 3 or 4 degrees and perfect weather for an ONSEN we were told so we sat in a bath next that seemed to be much hotter but only maybe because we were outside in the cold. Stayed there for about 20 minutes and then thought we’d give the steam room a go.

Well, the steam room was so steamy (funny that) that we couldn’t see much and an old guy bumped into me bum first….ewwwwww….but we sat in the small bath at the end of the room which was green and smelled vaguely of pinetarsol. Actually it was quite nice. Last we went in to the SAUNA. Now my idea of a sauna is steamy but this room had an air heater. It was set on 60 degrees!!!! Couldn’t touch the floor, walls or anything so I sat on my towel for about 2 minutes, got a fairly bad headache and left.

Out in the locker room again there were people having cold showers, hot showers, using hair dryers, sitting enjoying their nakedness.....all sorts of things going on. I kinda put on my clothes in a bit of a hurry and got out of there. Hey, I`d just been publicly naked for the past hour why did I need more?!

Anyway, that`s an experience I won`t forget in a hurry.