Co-Ed Naked Spa Hopping

            My friend Diane and I were spending two weeks traveling around Japan, which included a jaunt to the southern island of Kyushu where Beppu is located.  Beppu is a geo-thermal wonderland of natural hot mineral springs.  Billows of steam rise everywhere, giving the town an atmosphere of a giant outdoor sauna or a film noir movie set.  We had already spent several days in Beppu experiencing the wonderful variety of available tourist attractions.  We had been buried in 140 degree sand up to our necks, had enjoyed several mineral baths that claimed therapeutic properties ranging from improving one’s complexion to healing arthritis, and had toured around the “hells” of Beppu, which are boiling ponds ranging in color from vermilion to sky blue.

It was our last day and we had just hours left before our train departed to Tokyo.  I felt we had “done” Beppu, but soon learned that Beppu was not “done” with us. 

While taking our final stroll around town, we came upon another spa that Diane wanted to try.  I had immediate reservations since this resort was not mentioned in my guidebook and all of the signs were in Japanese, leading me to believe this was “off the beaten track” for tourists.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I believe the best part of traveling happens spontaneously and I love the adventure of having “non-touristy, local” experiences.  But when it comes to exposing my body, I’m extra cautious.   

“Come on.  We’re fourteen time zones away from everyone we know,” Diane argued.  She had a point.  Completely ignoring my gut that was shouting, “Don’t do it!” always a mistake, we entered the building.  

We disrobed in the locker room and entered a communal indoor mud bath. Luxuriating in the slick mud with other women, we moved back and forth between the hotter and cooler areas of the bath until we had had enough. We rinsed off under a cold shower and just before stepping outside, one of the attendants grabbed onto my arm.  She urgently tried to tell me something that was obviously very important.  But my ignorance of the language and inability to decipher Japanese charades had rendered her communiqué impossible to interpret.

So it was that Diane and I, two fairly well-endowed women, stepped outside, naked as the day we were born, whereupon we made three crucial discoveries: we were the only Gaijin (foreigners) at the spa, the resort was co-ed, and the two of us were missing one small, but essential item.  Every Japanese person we encountered, and 99.9 percent of them were of the male persuasion, was holding a small hand towel the size of a wash cloth, over his genitals.

Diane and I were not just naked. We were beyond naked. We were Über-naked.

Had we missed the warning sign in the locker room: “Please remember, don’t shame Buddha, all of the Shinto deities and the memory of hundreds of generations of your ancestors by stepping outside without your little washcloth?”  Or perhaps there was no sign because the Japanese are born holding these tiny cloths as they exit the birth canal?

Desperate to cover ourselves, Diane and I crisscrossed our arms over our bodies.  With our hands hovering ineffectively over our nether regions, we darted to the nearest hot spring for cover.  The dark gray, mineral-laden water conveniently covered our nudity, and thankfully, we were alone. 

But not for long.

Apparently, word of the two, too-naked, big-breasted American women, had spread like wildfire throughout the spa.  Suddenly, dozens of extraordinarily friendly men, also unclothed, but of course with the obligatory washcloths, joined us in our pool.  I did my best to fend off the many overtures from these interlopers who floated dangerously into my personal space, trying to chat us up.  The Japanese love nothing more than to practice English, but the last thing I wanted to do was encourage naked fraternizing. 

After a few minutes, I noticed that I had begun sweating profusely from the intense heat. After fifteen minutes, I felt nauseous.

I knew that I had to get out of this bubbling caldron, but escaping would have required climbing up a three-foot ladder to exit the pool, thereby providing a front-row view of that to which only gynecologists and lovers should be privy. My mind, which was now melting along with the rest of me, struggled to reason that I was thousands of miles from home, and the chance that I would ever see any of these men again was infinitesimally small.  But I couldn’t bear the thought of baring my undercarriage, free of charge, to this rapt group of strangers.  Diane agreed, so the two of us waited it out with a steely determination that would have impressed any prisoner of war.

One by one, our fan club left, and finally, we were alone, once again.  We quickly made our getaway. Like two boiled lobsters plucked from a pot, steam rose off our crimson bodies, as we climbed out and once again scurried for cover to the nearest pool.

And so it went.

We spent the rest of the afternoon sprinting from one hot spring to another until we came to the last one of the day.  Divided into three sections, each about the length and width of a bathtub, Diane and I chose adjacent pools.  As we stretched out, we discovered that the water was only a few inches deep, so our entire torsos were completely exposed to the air. 

We sat up and struggled to reposition ourselves to find some cover.  A moment later, a man in a deep pool next to ours who had witnessed our thrashing, floated over to us, stuck his foot out of the water and pointed at it.  It took only a moment to realize that Diane and I were lying in the footbaths—a fitting end, I suppose, to an altogether much too naked and humiliating day.

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