Wednesday, June 7, 2006

   Bathhouse rules
yes Im back one year later and a heck of a lot crazier. Yes I will be posting stories based upon stuff that hapeened in the bathhouse(get your minds out of the gutter) which are quite funny in their own right, like the all-house-sing-a-long i kinda started, my refusel to get totally in a (which means boys and s)bath, the time I sliped on the soap and knocked my self out cold. Whacky stuff like that though I will change the charater names and the name of the baths I used so as not to get sued.

Bath House Rules

Intro:A Nihon Bath house is a little different that any thing you will find in America. The family i stayed with was called Suna, when inducted into the family they sortened my nick name to Kit, there for I was Kit Suna.(basicly back where I started) There was only one problem with their perfect little home, they where haveing the tub remodled, there for forceing us to use the the public baths(which I stilll used after the bathtub was fixed)and these are some of the ground rules I learned
1.the bath house I used was meaning all es bathed together. There are some public baths that are divided into male/female sides but this was not one of them
2. In Japan it is considered rude and unclean to wash in the bath. The soaping/shampooing/rinseing takes place on an small bench in front of a sink like device that uses only cold water(or I could only figure out how to get cold water)where the only theing you wore was a small cloth around your waist.(the cloth was about the size of a hand towl)
3. In the actual bath you soak not bathe. The tubs them seves are huge and made of either some kind of wood or stone. The water is kept at a nice gentle 83 degrees(at first I felt like a lobster) even hotter in the geaser bath that I some times use in order to listen to their stories(something I became addicted to)in there it some times spiked to 103.
4.Bathing is not only an act of higene but one of socail(forgive me if my english is a little off) grace. Much like the Romans they use bathing as a means to hangout and talk for a lack of better words. The age of the people seems to dictate what they do in the bath. the babies 1-3 stayed with their mothers, the young kids 4-7 played casing one another some times with squirt guns, preteens grouped with their friends and chatted about school and what not, teenage boy lounged about trying to look cool, teenage gawked at what ever boy they fancied,(I got quite a lot of looks from females of all ages with my athletic body, mostly cocassin complection and american to boot)men 20-50 read the paper and descusted stock and what not, women 20-50 talked about books and marraige, the old folks yelled at whoever to turn up the heat and told storie of the old days which I loved.
All and all you will hear some fun stories about my time spent in the bath and the happenings that went on.
Comments (0)