A little while ago I briefly touched upon the topic of yakuza in the sento when I wrote about tattoos in the sento. When I was at my local sento last night for my weekly soak I was briefly eye-balled by a lone yakuza member who I had never seen there before. Somehow sento culture and yakuza culture are somewhat intertwined, and my encounter last night got me curious.
There are currently an estimated 87,000 active yakuza members in Japan. They generally mind their own business, their business being organized crime. You can easily pass a yakuza member on the street without recognizing their affiliation. When you bump into one in a sento however, they are easily recognizable by their full-body tattoos.
Their sheer presence can be scary to common Japanese. I think that has more to do with the fact that they are identifiably yakuza, rather than by their demeanor. As they do on the street, in the sento they generally mind their own business, if they are by themselves. I meet the same yakuza guy at the sento every week, and he is always by himself and keeps to himself. He will generally mumble a quite konbanwa to me, but that’s it.
Groups of two or more younger yakuza members might be different. They can be loud and their presence can be intimidating, but I have never been harassed. Their loudness definitely stands out in Japan, but they are not that different from a group of foreigners visiting a sento. The can also be loud and their loudness and lack of regard for others can be intimidating just the same.
So should you be afraid of yakuza at the sento? I would say no. The only thing that might happen is that they start talking to you because they are curious, just because they don’t have the social inhibiting that common Japanese people might feel.
I wrote this based on how I see things. If you have a different take on this, I would love to hear your comments.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 10:44 am and is filed under The way of the sento . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Address: 1丁目132-1西味鋺, Kita Ward, Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture, Japan
Telephone: 052-902-2651
My experience: I was in Nagoya for a business trip and with a few hours to kill I decided to look for a place to take a soak. I found this place, not near to any form of public transport, but not far from where I was working, so I decided to check it out.
This public bath is an onsen built in super sento style. It’s very spacious in setup and has everything you’d expect from a super sento, including a place to get your hair cut, a restaurant, and of course a large variety of baths. The baths are fairly evenly divided between the inside and outside bathing areas. Inside there are a big bath with seven or so different types of massage jets, a bath filled with the mineral goodness of the hot spring this bath house is built on, a regular warm and a regular cold bath. There is also a rather spacious sauna.
My favorite part however was the outside area, again quite spacious in setup. There are a couple of rock pools and a herb bath with seasonal herbs, as well as an area with stone beds to relax and dry up. The outside area offers a view of the adjacent river, and the residential tower across the river.
While in Nagoya proper, the nearest subway station is about a half an hour walk away, which is the only downside if you’re just visiting the city.
This entry was posted on Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 9:27 am and is filed under Experience reports, Nagoya . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Address: 4丁目20塚脇, Takatsuki City, Ōsaka Prefecture, Japan
Telephone: 072-689-6700
Website: http://www.yumeminosato.jp/
My experience: I live only about a 10 minute bike ride away from this onsen at the foot of the Settsu Gorge in Takatsuki, but until now I did not have a chance to go and check it out. Today though, on an irregular day off I decided to take that ride and experience the dip.
On approach the building housing this onsen looks too small to contain any type of size-able bath. That’s about as wrong a first impression as it gets though. The baths are stacked on the second and third floors, making the building look compact, but yet leaving plenty of room for bathing.
Anyhow, the entrance hall on the first floor is spacious and contains a restaurant, just like you would expect from this type of establishment. After I buy my ticket the gentleman at the front desk points me in the direction of the stairs leading up to the baths. And the baths don’t disappoint. As I mentioned earlier, this is actually an onsen, which means the water contains a whole host of minerals. The minerals make the water thick but soft as silk. The water is a comfortable 41.5°C, not too hot, not too cold.
In the indoor area is one huge bath, a couple of jet baths and a sauna. The fun begins outside, with a set of stairs leading up to the roof, where they’ve put in another huge bath under the open sky. With the spring wind warming the air and the onsen water warming the rest, I enjoyed a good 20 minutes on the roof.
It was a nice little excursion that I should have taken months ago. Oh, I also should mention there is a free shuttle bus that can take you to Shofuen from JR Takatsuki station. It departs JR Takatsuki every hour on the hour.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 4:13 pm and is filed under Experience reports, Takatsuki City . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.There are of course many things you can expect to find when you visit a sento: baths, changing rooms, the elderly, etc. Let’s have a look at a few of the not-so-expected things you are all but guaranteed to find at pretty much any sento in the land.
Ever since I started SentoGuide I thought it would be really need if it would be possible to search for a sento near your current location. This would make it so much easier to find a public bath when you’re traveling around Japan, or even if you’d just like to explore sento in your local area.
The good people over at W3C, the organisation in charge of HTML, the engine of the internet, have recently added a very cool tool to the latest HTML version (HTML5) making it possible for websites to pull your current location from either a GPS chip in your phone or your WiFi connection. How exactly that works is beyond me, but what I do know is that all of a sudden searching sento nearby has become relatively easy from a programming stand-point, and extremely easy from a user stand-point.
I am very excited to announce the initial release of SentoNear.me, a service that lets you look for public baths near you on an iPhone (minimum OS version 3) or with the latest version of Firefox on your PC. The service is still very much in development, and any feedback would be extremely welcome.
Curious? Quickly go to SentoNear.me.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 10:49 am and is filed under About us . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Spaworld in Ōsaka is one of the biggest public bathing complexes in the Kansai region. Boosting a massive six floors, three of which are dedicated to bathing space, it’s a great place to spend a day. The bathing floors are divided into a European floor, which over 20 European-themed baths, a similar Asian-themed floor and a swimming pool on the top floor. The European and Asian floors are for nude bathing and alternate on a roughly monthly basis between the genders. The swimming pool is a mixed gender affair with bathing suits being the compulsory attire.
You can read all about the experience I had on one of my many visits to Spaworld here, but what I would like to point your attention to in this post is the entrance fee. Spaworld generally charges a steep ¥2,400 for a three hour period of ¥2,700 for a whole day of bathing fun. If that way to expensive I agree with you, and fortunately for the not-so-well-endowed Spaworld slashes its entrance fee to a more affordable ¥1,000 for a whole day on a regular basis.
Currently they’re in the middle of another ¥1,000 campaign (¥1000キャンペーン). The current campaign runs until June 30, 2010.
Spaworld is open from 10:00AM till 8:45AM the next day, and if you arrive any time before midnight you can stay until closing time for ¥1,000. If you enter after midnight you’ll be charged a little extra.
Address: 3丁目4-24恵美須東, Naniwa Ward, Ōsaka City, Ōsaka Prefecture, Japan
Telephone: 06-6631-0001
Website: http://www.spaworld.co.jp/english/
If you’re a faithful reader of SentoGuide you’ll probably notice that the layout of the site has changed quite a bit over the past few days. Since SentoGuide uses WordPress as its back-end, and WordPress has a wonderful template system, I have started crafting a custom template for this site.
The aim of this is two-fold. Firstly I would like to make SentoGuide easier to navigate. To do this I’ve moved the list of prefectures in which we list public baths from the right side to the top of the page, and rather than listing all cities under those prefectures in the same list, they are now cozily nested under the prefecture they belong.
The second aim is to make the site prettier. The prettiness will roll out over the next few weeks. Any suggestions are of course always welcome in the comment section of this post.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 11:42 am and is filed under About us . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
In an earlier post I wrote it is generally frowned upon to enter a sento or onsen with tattoos exposed. Some of the readers of this blog agreed with this, but others didn’t. And true enough, there is no set rule in the sento etiquette book about tattoos. So is it a preconceived notion that tattoos are out?
Well, yes and no. First, let’s have a look at the yes.
Many family oriented sento, super sento and onsen will explicitly ban people with tattoos from entering. They will have a fairly large sign up at the entrance stating tattoos are not welcome. Gokurakuyu for example does not welcome anybody with tattoos. This is presumably because many families with children visit these places.
So why would children take offense? Well, I’m not sure they would, but as a general rule most members of the Japanese yakuza sport large tattoos on their upper bodies. Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, are generally rough people who might be loud, disregard sento etiquette and set a bad example for children. So a ban on tattoos is an indirect way of telling yakuza they are not welcome.
No let’s have a quick look at the no.
Smaller neighborhood baths generally don’t mind, since the visitors there don’t include many children, and is generally made up of a small core of regular bathers, sometimes including yakuza.
So what about the foreigner with the fashion tat? Know that yakuza tattoos usually have a specific, very Japanese design which make them identifiably yakuza tattoos. If your own tattoo is not modeled after a Japanese gangster tattoo, fellow bathers will recognize you don’t belong to any yakuza clan.
So in conclusion, some baths will specifically state that tattooed people are not welcome, and if that’s the case, live with it. Their house, their rules. If there is no sign banning tattoos at the front door, proceed at your own discretion if you have a tattoo. I know some people don’t feel comfortable exposing their tattoo at a sento and some people don’t care. If you decide to give it a go, try and be polite and cover it a little with a towel if you want, and have a good look at how your fellow bathers react. Sometimes you’ll get stared at, and sometimes you won’t.
I know it’s a bit of a vague issue, so any comments/corrections/additions are welcome.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 11:08 am and is filed under The way of the sento . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.In an earlier post I asked your help to update a list with unique sento written in 2005. Some of the sento on the list have closed since the original list was written. I received some helpful comments to that post, and after some research and compiling, here it is: the new list.
First, let me say that since there are estimated to be over 6,000 sento in Japan, any list of most unique sento is bound to be inaccurate and incomplete, so I’ve dropped that idea and would just like to present you with a list of some unique sento. There are very likely very unique sento out there that are not on the list, simply because I nor you know about them. Since this is therefore not a top 6, but just a list of 6 (exactly 0.1% of the estimated total number of sento in Japan), the numbers don’t denote rank.
Anyway, enough prefatory, let’s list!
Image from Wikipedia
This bath is located in Matsuyama, on the island of Shikoku. I initially started searching for a unique sento in Shikoku because Craig mentioned in the comments that everybody always forgets about the island. I soon found this bath.
Unique point: this is the oldest operational bath house bath house in Japan and its building is listed as national culturally important property. This sento was also the inspiration for the bath house in the Studio Ghibli movie Spirited Away.
Located in the inner-suburbs of Kyoto, this bath is, as opposed to some of the baths on this list, easy to find and even features in the Lonely Planet guidebook. It has been in business for close to 100 years.
Unique point: the building itself is not your standard bath house building, but rather it has the atmosphere of a small temple. The entrance gate and building are separated by a small Japanese garden. The changing rooms are what inspired my temple comparison, with beautiful carved woodwork and painted ceilings. The bathing area is separated from the changing room by yet another small Japanese garden which you cross by wooden bridge.
By many Daikokuyu is seen as the King of Sento. It is extremely popular with sento fans and listed in many guides as one of the best, if not the best sento in Tokyo.
Unique point: Like Funaoka Onsen this bath is said to resemble a Buddhist temple, and comes complete with a beautiful Japanese garden. Its sheer popularity and the buzz it generates in the blog-o-sphere has earned it a spot on this list.
Image from Inside Japan Blog
When I was compiling this list I did a quick search to see if anybody had discovered a unique sento and blogged about it. AJD, over at the Inside Japan Blog certainly did.
Unique point: This bath appears very simple, but has a lot of history behind it. The changing room for example (see photo) has a beautiful wooden floor and matching wooden lockers.
This bath was listed on the original list, and deserves a place on this updated version too.
Unique point: the building is a typical Japanese structure. A ‘kannon-do’ (enshrined Goddess of Mercy) is arranged above the bandai. This bath is also renowned for its alpine scenery mosaic.
Another bath contained on the original list and deserving of a spot in this new version.
Unique point: this bath was built at a cost of ¥80,000 in 1937. The Statue of Liberty in the main entrance is a play on words, the Japanese for bathing being ‘nyuyoku’, which sounds like the Japanese way of pronouncing New York. This sento has many highlights, such as stained glass, a grampus on the roof, all granite bathroom, etc.
This article is a submission for the Japan Blog Matsuri hosted by Muza-chan’s Gate to Japan.
In a dark corner of the internet I found a list of the 10 most unique sento in Japan. This list, written up in 2005, lists the following 10 baths:
As it turns out, the four of the bath houses on the list have closed since the list was written. The ones that are linked to their corresponding SentoGuide listing are still open and are indeed quite unique. I have been to number 6: Funaoka Onsen myself, and as the original composer of the list wrote the open-worked balustrades … fascinated me.
Initially I wanted to write this post simply to bring the list to your attention, but when I found out four of the sento on the list had closed I figured we (you & me) could contemporize the list a little. Please submit any sento you deem unique in the comment section and hopefully we’ll get enough submission to update the list.
This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 12:49 pm and is filed under The way of the sento . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
