Sento spectacular -- Tokyo's amazing public baths
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.
Then and now
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.
How to sento
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.
But don't forget
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.
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.
Senju Motomachi 27-1, Adachi-ku, + 81 (0) 3 3882 2660; open 3 p.m.-midnight, closed Friday; www.slowtime.net
Its street facing façade 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.
Senju Kotobuki-cho 32-6, Adachi-ku, + 81 (0) 3 3881-3001; open 3 p.m.-midnight, closed Monday.
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