My Broken Shower

A week and a half ago the hot water heater in my shower broke. I’ve previously outlined all the reasons why winter is so cold here, so I won’t go into it again, but even without all of those reasons, living sans hot showers in the middle of winter in any country is a pretty pitiable situation. Following an incident involving billowing, black smoke and the smell of burning plastic, I had three different men on two different days come to make sure that, yes indeed, the heater is broken and needs to be fixed (which is, obviously, the simple truth I had informed them of initially, but in typical Japanese style, half the time fixing something is spent confirming the fact that there really is a problem in the first place). It won’t be fixed till this next Saturday, which means that I will have been shower-less for over two weeks, and have been showering at a friend’s and using an alternative that is pretty unique to Japan.

Fortunately for my current situation and for others in similar situations (since I can only imagine there must be others), Japan likes public bathing facilities. Called onsens, these baths often feature special, magically scented/filtered/originated water that promises to not only clean you, but also relax you and your weary soul. The onsens I have visited have all been scenic and spa-like in both (my) purpose and (their) execution, but my present conundrum has shown me that the most likely reason Japan’s onsen culture has continued into the present age is because winter here sucks and their water heaters break because many of them are poorly designed and the people need a socially acceptable alternative to taking showers the same temperature as glaciers. Hence, the perpetuation of resort-like, elaborate public baths in the middle of cities that are generally not terribly expensive (maybe $7 for as long as you want, and there are usually sauna rooms, etc., and shampoo-type products provided) and are often quite beautiful.

One potential snag, however, for the modern Western in his/her enjoyment of relaxation in a cedar-scented hot tub with other people he/she doesn’t know is the fact that many of these onsens remain traditionally traditional and don’t allow tattoos. Tattoos are still social taboos in Japan, but they also aren’t difficult to cover up if you are wearing clothes, so they don’t have much effect on everyday life and work. At an onsen, however, where the point is to get clean, hiding the ink becomes near-impossible (I’ve heard of people covering them up with bandages, but that definitely seems not worth the effort. Especially if you have more than one). Up until this point, the tattoo/onsen non-allowance hasn’t been issue for me because it was either a) not a problem at the particular onsen, or b) I just didn’t ask. This is generally more of a problem at old-school onsens which keep stricter rules, and less of one at onsens in bigger cities with more younger (or foreign) clientele. So it surprised me when, at an onsen in a city which had plenty of younger people , I was interrupted while washing my hair by a woman telling me that I actually wasn’t allowed to enter the facilities with tattoos, but it was fine for that day, presumably because I’d already paid and, well, had already started my onsen-ing. Which is really too bad, because the particular place had a nice vibe and was only a fifteen-minute drive from my house. Not that I can now ever go back again. However, if you are ever in Akita City, I’d recommend it – as long as you are tattoo-less.

Snow Footprints

 

About Winter

I had forgotten for a moment it had snowed till I looked out the window. On the rooftops lay a white overcoat which wouldn’t melt until March, thick and looking not quite real. The tops of houses do not form the high peaked triangles of the West, but instead mostly are flat, allowing the snow to pile up and give a semi-accurate representation of how much had fallen since winter had begun over a month ago. The roofs indicate about eighteen inches. It only grows deeper.

In the distance at the top of the city’s central hill I could see Senshu Koen’s lookout tower, a building inclemently Japanese with its spiked turrets at either end and its curved sloping sides. It rose above the sleepy, snowy city by just a floor or so, its lookout deck level with the top of the tree line I could see from the big windows at school. No trees have leaves because they don’t grow evergreens here, just the kind that died in winter. Or hibernated. The trees never look like they have perished so much as they appear to be taking a nap. They make autumn a riot of pristine colors; they make winter look like it needs another blanket.

The snow lays on top of everything and makes it cold. It doesn’t act as insulation because Japan doesn’t have any, except in the chilliest reaches of Hokkaido prefecture where it is deemed cold enough to warrant protecting the inside from the outside – instead the snow is an everyday reminder that I will be cold from the moment I get out of bed to the moment my electric blanket kicks in again at night. The ironic thing about the blanket is that in between the off and high settings not much heat is produced, which often means I wake up sweating, and since the purpose of sweat is to cool a body down, I am usually colder than when I start, in addition to being sweaty. Still. In a country where the most common method of heating the everyday below-freezing temperatures is with either expensive electricity or open kerosene flames, with which carbon monoxide is a constant worry, one learns to wear light layers even inside, to minimize the amount of necessary living space, and to close the doors of all rooms not being utilized. For me, this means no spare bedroom except as a place to store coats and empty cardboard boxes, and heating the open bathroom area with a tiny halogen heater that accomplishes little unless left on for a full 24 hours.

We fill our rice paper houses with unabashed fire hazards.

To survive winter, one also buys a kotatsu, possibly a heated carpet, and numerous bottles of alcohol. Recently a flyer left on my desk at school featured clip art of a snuggly cat ready for winter in Japan. The cat was under a kotatsu and had a kerosene heater beside it. As I explained to my parents, the picture is essentially correct in representing actual Japanese winter survival methods, minus the fact that the cat doesn’t have any booze with it and isn’t wretchedly crying.

 

In this way, people seem simultaneously unfazed and defeated by winter. On any given day I see old women riding bicycles down frozen roadways in a blizzard, and heated highways, while I also see an inherent desperation on the part of everyone to hunker down and just survive, refusing to consider that maybe there exist in the world ways to make the cold more bearable.

School classrooms have radiators and sometimes become so warm with 30+ bodies the students open a window; in hallways you can see your breath. It seems apparent that a middle-ground between these two extremes should exist, and in fact it does exist. It’s called central heating, a concept Japan and all Japanese people would consider magical and well-worth their investment if not for its convenience and efficiency, but also for its pure joy in controlled-atmospheric form. However, despite such technologies being commonplace in countries Japanese consider their equals and quite possibly beneath them, we continue on with our archaic, third-world attempts at a manageable winter. It doesn’t make sense. And yet there you have it.

My life in winter looks little like that of the cat in the cartoon, as my life in Japan often looks little like the cartoons that seem to define, even dictate, the life of every Japanese person around me.  Everything, for them, has big eyes and makes sound effects when it moves, is covered in fur, or has its own theme song. Everything, for me, is trying to act like I still have a real life and a career and bills and haven’t been magically transported to the gaijin supporting character role of an anime episode. I will never wear a pleated skirt for this very reason – as a safety measure against being conformed too much to the fluffy, feel-good lives the high school students around me appear to occupy. I have to remind myself constantly that instances here are weird and would be mocked if they occurred anywhere but here.

The grown man beside me drinks tomato juice boxes. Case in point.

However, despite all the bizarre customs and, frankly, counterintuitive ones, Japan looks beautiful in its snowy overcoat, and I don’t really mind having a heated table to curl up under every night. When winter ends, we have hanami (cherry blossom viewing), and when hanami ends, we have summer festivals, and when summer festivals end, we have kouyo (autumn leaf viewing), and when kouyo ends, we have winter again, as though Japan just goes from wearing one gorgeous kimono to the next in succession with the seasons, like an ancient princess used to having her own theme song play all year long.