Cathedrals of the Flesh (23 page)

I stood on the slated walkway, cataloging all the pools, one with a straw pagoda, another that recessed into a cave, a third
with a small Buddha shrine at the far end. The women looked young, beautiful, and immortally vital with their flushed onsen
complexions. Many carried young children. Everyone looked grateful to be here in this bathing garden, far from Tokyo, if only
mentally. I chose the pool with the Buddha statue, and immediately a group of teenage girls started to chat me up. They began
with a school-scripted dialogue that, after a week in Japan, I'd performed at least twenty times.

'Where . . . are . . . you . . . from?' they summoned slowly.

'New York City,' I replied, and enjoyed the usual ohhs and ahhs that pronouncing New York City your hometown garners abroad.
It's an instant passport to rock star status.

One of the girls told me, 'This water is the most original in this pool,' which I took to mean was most direct from the subterranean
source. They splashed the water onto their faces, and I followed. Their serene happiness was infectious, and the thought that
hot spring bathing constituted a major girls outing thrilled me.

After my delightfully natural Hakone bathing experience, I set out for what I knew would be a ghastly curiosity. I walked
another three miles along a highway in search of Yunessun, a newly opened theme park devoted to bathing. I was simultaneously
sickened and awed by this uniquely Japanese brand of genius kitsch - the synthetic, Formica version of the Turkish hamam and
the prefab, 'decaying' Ionic columns and urns surrounding the Roman bath. If four thousand people a day traipsed through this
tacky Epcot Center of bathing cultures, then surely Marina and I would attract a stampede of visitors to our impeccably tasteful
establishment.

While I did this, Philippe did whatever art dealers do - inspect paintings, seduce prospective buyers, drink Champagne. Despite
Philippe's lack of depth and genuine understanding, his sense of humor and playfulness made him compelling. He was the perfect
antidote to heartbreak, if a slightly guilty one. When he suggested that we visit Takaragawa together, the onsen that Mizuo
and Ayako had both mentioned, I balked at first. Of course, nothing sounded more enjoyable than to soak with an attractive
man in a mountainside
rotenburo.
But nice people don't run off with Belgian art dealers days after a breakup.

Throughout our two-day excursion, Philippe and I made enough gaijin gaffes to keep area sushi bar conversations humming for
weeks. Philippe had told me on the plane that he was 'proficient in Japanese.' To me, 'proficient' means you can decode directions
and engage in cursory chitchat, but you can't tell a joke or discuss literature. Proficient obviously meant something else
entirely to Philippe. When left to our own devices, without Max or Mizuo to translate, Philippe could barely ask for a glass
of water.

It took us over an hour of involved pantomime and phrase book pointing to check into the Takaragawa
ryokan,
a traditional Japanese inn deep in the Gumma mountains, where the jagged peaks were shaped like Egyptian pyramids. Upon arrival,
we had been shoved into the gaijin hotel. Whereas hundreds of Japanese people were at the inn down the road, wearing enviable
rough cotton brown robes, we were the only guests at our hotel and stuck with prissy blue silk robes to boot.

Mikono Ono, the proprietor with four missing front teeth, did the
ryokan
song and dance, explaining the many features of the room, except perhaps the most important one - that inside the quaint-looking
bathroom was a toilet capable of physical assault. Innocently, you might press a button hoping to flush the toilet, and the
next second a stealthy projectile instrument emerges from the back of the bowl and with dead-on accuracy sprays warm water
up your bottom. We would learn that later; now we learned about the exhausting choreography of slipper changing. Here's a
summary:

When you arrive at the
ryokan, leave
your contaminated street shoes at the front door and put on special corridor-roaming slippers. At the entrance of your bedroom,
remove dirty corridor-roaming slippers. Walk on the tatami-matted floor with stockinged feet (bare feet only if you must).
If you go to the bathroom, make sure to put on the special bathroom slippers, marked 'toilet' on the toe and found by the
bathroom door. After you flush — with a possible hose-down by the electronic proctologist — make sure to remove the bathroom
slippers. Walking around in slippers marked 'toilet' is the ultimate gaijin faux pas. If you decide to stroll in the garden,
you must again don dirty corridor-roaming slippers; by the door of the garden, you'll see a supply of dirtier, nastier garden
slippers. A good rule of thumb: If you haven't changed footwear in over fifteen paces, you've done something horribly wrong.

We dressed carefully. I introduced Philippe to the essential leisurewear of any onsen stay. The yukata is a loose-fitting,
wide-sleeved cotton robe.
Kata
means garment and
yu
hot water; thus yukata is the garment designed for strolling to and from the baths. More problematic are the geta, wooden
clogs commonly worn at hot spring towns that force all wearers, from children to sumo wrestlers, to shuffle along like delicate
geisha.

We stumbled through an outdoor bamboo tunnel lit by kerosene and filled with stalls selling a bizarre bric-a-brac of Buddhist
statues, plastic action figures, stuffed animals, and incense sticks. After the wares, we passed a temple precinct, an alcove
for
zazen,
silent meditation. We peered into the cages of brown bears and finally emerged into the open autumn air, the fiery-leafed
maples bending toward the rocky valley of
rotenburo,
as if to listen to the water. The crisp October wind rustled the leaves and shook the branches, muting the sound of the water.
A fifty-foot bamboo pipe stretched from the mountainside where we stood down into the bath, delivering hot water.

This incredible natural beauty is considered sacred in Japan's Shinto culture. I knew the onsen had religious origins; almost
all of Japan's hot springs were originally founded by Buddhist monks wandering through the wilderness on forty-day fasts.
During the Tumulus period, many Shinto shrines were built next to hot springs. Takaragawa looked like one of those shrines,
the straw-thatched pagoda covering part of the enormous, amoeba-shaped pool, the stone lanterns, so common at shrines, set
up like an altar at one corner of the pool, a stone-sculpted Buddha presiding over another corner. It was a glorious scene.
I admired the baths, registered the many people soaking in the pool, but in my eagerness to get out of the cool air and into
the hot water, I didn't observe as much as I should have.

Philippe and I each disappeared into our separate changing rooms, agreeing to meet naked outside in a moment. Bath nudity
never causes as much anxiety as bedroom nudity, at least not for me. This main
rotenburo
at Takaragawa was reputed to be one of the few mixed-gender baths in the country, and Mikono Ono had vouched for that, too.
All Japanese baths used to be mixed gender until Commodore Perry arrived in 1853 and was so scandalized by the sight of men
and women bathing together that he forced the new Meiji government to segregate the baths according to Western Victorian standards
of morality. (This is the story, but the actual history is more complicated.)

Because I thought myself to be at a mixed bath, I left the dressing room carrying only the
furoshiki,
the small square cloth ten inches by ten inches. I stood at the steps of the red-stone
rotenburo,
surveying the other bathers. Everyone was studiously not looking at me. Not only was I the only gaijin woman, which would
have been distinction enough, but I realized in a sudden, horrifying flash that I was the only naked woman. All the Japanese
women had wrapped huge beach towels around their bodies, hiding everything in between their shoulders and midthighs. Philippe
came out of his dressing room and stood next to me. It took him a moment to register that one of these things was not like
the other. He could easily do what all the Japanese men did - delicately place the washcloth over his groin. For me, however,
there was no hope. What should I even try to cover with the tiny cloth? Summoning inner reserves of poise — and there wasn't
much to draw from — I quickly and deliberately descended the steps into the bath. One hundred pairs of eyes pretended not
to watch me. Philippe was in hysterics.

In my moment of supreme embarrassment, I tried to focus again on the religious origins of these baths. I remembered a passage
from
Euro
that explained: 'Bathing in Japan is best when communal. Never inhibited by Judeo-Christian embarrassment about the human
body or taboos on public nudity, the Japanese have always bathed in groups. Until quite recently, men and women soaked together
in public bathhouses as well as hot springs.' Those days were sadly over. 'Judeo-Christian embarrassment' had firmly taken
root, but no one had told me. I alone was enjoying the innocence of the Garden of Eden, while the rest of the bathers were
decked out in fig leaves.

I recovered my composure after several dunks in hot, clear water. At least my clumsy naked entrance hadn't been caught on
film. Philippe and I, now guarded by a mist rising off the hot water, made our way over to the bamboo pipe resting on a rocky
ledge. The water, straight from the deep, underground source - I imagined raging geothermal fires presided over by the Shinto
fire god - was hotter than the water in the pool, and we took turns arching our heads under the spout. The flow was gentle,
and as the water massaged my head I looked toward the sky. Brilliant red and orange leaves flapped in the wind, barely tethered
to the trees, while some leaves danced in the air and fell toward the pool. Other bathers, lying on their backs, floated around
the pool, also staring at the sky. Were we tricking nature by not braving the elements, but instead contemplating nature from
inside the heat of this red-stoned pool? Luckily nature gave us this pool, making this a religious pleasure, not a hedonistic
one. Not that I needed to justify pleasure anymore.

We stayed in the pool for hours. When the heat started to make us dizzy, we'd sit on a rock ledge in the 40-degree-Fahrenheit
air, our bodies coughing steam and feeling not the faintest nip in the air. Then we'd play a game to see who could stand the
cold the longest and who first took refuge in the pool. Philippe would always get cold first (Vermonters are heartier than
Belgians), but he's more competitive, so I lost every time.

Philippe and I had nothing in common, but when he left for New York, I missed him for the first few days. Between Hakone and
Takaragawa, I had caught the onsen bug and wanted to focus my search on more remote onsen. But first, I had to see how they
bathed in Japan's most compelling and cultured city, Kyoto.

One need only open a guidebook to learn that Kyoto is a city of 1.4 million people. But somehow this fact completely escaped
me, and I arrived expecting an intimate jewel box of a city. First I figured the high-gloss, futuristic train station was
an exception, the bleak avenues and ugly skyscrapers other aberrations. Finally I realized that the Kyoto of Western imagination
is hidden in small pockets around the city. It takes a diligent and persistent traveler to find the intimate sake bars, the
raked gardens, and the geisha-inhabited lanes. I cursed Pico Iyer, one of my favorite writers, for misleading me in
The Lady and the
Monk,
his book about Kyoto that conveniently skims over any urban blight and concentrates on footbridges, changing leaves, and his
growing obsession with a Japanese housewife.

Kyoto's most interesting accommodations include a dozen or so Buddhist monasteries that offer room and board. The sentos were,
as promised, everywhere. Moreover, they were still vital without needing to curry contemporary favor with slapdash exercise
and karaoke wings. I quickly fell into a pattern of nightly visits to the Santo-Yu Sento (translation: Good Health and Hot
Water Bath). Not only was it three 90-degree turns away from my monastery, it had an intriguing
denkifuro
that I liked to flirt with.

The
denkifuro
is a uniquely Japanese invention: a bath with electric current running through it. What sicko thought of this? I wondered.
The Japanese believe that the light electric current stimulates the circulation. Game for any bath, no matter how freakish,
I dipped my leg in and my body seized in horror. It felt like hundreds of crickets were trying to jump out of my calf. A woman
sitting in the six-foot-square pool smiled encouragingly at me. I added my second leg and began to lower myself into the bath.
The current felt anything but light. A rash of pins and needles stabbed my lower body, and I began to wonder how beneficial
to my health submerging my body into electrified water actually was. Add to that a concern that I might never have children
if I dipped my body any lower. Embarrassed, I bowed to the other bather, a strangely formal thing to do at a sento, and retreated
upstairs to the sento's large sauna with a glassed-in television. Ten women were sitting on pink plastic foam cushions, passively
watching the Osaka-Tokyo baseball game.

Overall, the Kyoto sentos were bigger than Tokyo's and more crowded as well. In a city of tiny apartments, the sentos' wide
tubs and water largesse — in fact, the Japanese love to watch the expensive hot water splash decadently over the tub's side
- made an otherwise cramped life tolerable. Also, many of the sentos had outdoor decks to showcase fabricated
rotenburos,
so bathers could enjoy the pinch of cold air from the safety of warm water. For a real
rotenburo
experience, Kyoto had one lovely outdoor onsen on its outskirts, Kurama Onsen. Kurama was simplicity itself. From the confines
of a twelve-foot rectangular wooden box, bathers would sit shoulder deep in 101 degrees Fahrenheit and contemplate the opposing
hilltop of swaying pines.