This post was recovered from an old blog that I had while studying abroad in Japan. I’ve only updated misspellings or dead links, but left any cringe worthy things or immature thoughts. I’ve decided to leave them as a snapshot of who I was and to see how far I’ve come. Any photos have been freshly edited and so are not the same as what was originally posted. Over the years I had several blogs, most lost to time, and I wanted to recover some lost memories and reflect on my life.

’ve already blogged about the Ofuro before and I’m gonna do it again because 1: I really like baths now, and 2: Japanese people really like baths. So an ofuro is basically just the name for a tub. At my dorm it was called the ofuro because it was just a bathtub at the dorm. Now there is also sento and onsen, both of which contain ofuro. Sento are bathhouses, usually within the neighborhood, which people go to bath and relax in the water. The sento is not as common today as it was 100, or even 50 years ago. This is due to almost all households having their own baths and plumbing now, which was not available before. I said sento contain ofuro, let me try to explain this. Within the sento are several baths (ofuro) with different features. The ones I’ve seen are: massage bath, medicine bath, standard hot water bath, mineral/onsen style bath, cold bath, electric bath, and a very hot bath.

• Massage baths are basically hot tubs as they have hot water and strong jets to massage your body.
• Medicine baths are baths with some sort of brown colored “medicine” added to it. I’m not sure what it is and I’d never heard about it before going to a sento.
• Standard hot water and very hot water baths are both pretty self explanatory.
• Mineral baths are baths with minerals added that mimic a natural hot spring (onsen). The keyword is “mimic.”
• A cold bath is a bath with really cold water. It also usually has water falling from above so you can put your head under it, kind of like a waterfall. I think this might be related to the practice of standing under a cold waterfall in nature, it’s supposed to make you strong. I think it’s from Buddhism, but don’t take my word for it. The cold bath is also usually placed next to the sauna, which most sento have.
• Finally there is the electric bath. Yes, it’s a bath of water with electricity going through it, although it’s a low voltage I’m sure, or at least I hope so. There are of course warnings that if you don’t have a good heart you shouldn’t get in, that’s very reassuring.

A common mistake by foreigners is to think that onsen and sento are the same, which they are not. The main difference is that onsen draw their water from hot springs, where sento use ordinary water heated up. Don’t shove sento aside though because they aren’t natural hot springs, they are very relaxing in their own right.

Back in Gion, I put my laptop back in my bag, took out my city map and figured out which way to go to the sento I’d found online. This night I would go to Gokou-yu Sento and the next night I would go to Funaoka “Onsen” (really a sento). Gokou-yu is fairly close to Kyoto station and can be found here.

After walking across the city I was on my last spurt of energy as I entered the sento and said good evening. I paid about 600 yen for entrance to the sento, a rental towel, shampoo, and soap. This about what it cost at the other sento too. I went in and had the best soak of my life, trying out all the baths, even the electric one. I could only stand to sit in it for about a minute or two because the sensation was so awkward. The electricity makes your muscles flex, kinda like those muscle infomercial things that were all the rage about 10 years ago.

The place was really clean and kind of generic looking. There was a bottom floor with showers and about 5 ofuro, and then there was an upstairs with a sauna, a couple showers, and two more ofuro. It was a Friday night around 10pm (they are open until 1am) and the place was fairly packed. Then about an hour or so later a couple guys with full body tattoos came in. I’m talking about the whole sleeve, the torso, and onto the legs. Most likely they were yakuza (Japanese Mob), but they didn’t seem very mean or intimidating. They just wanted a nice soak like everyone else.

The next few nights I alternated between Gokou-yu and Funaoka (which can be found here). Funaoka had a more atmospheric feeling, with a nice outdoor bath (rotenburo) and cool carvings on the wall and ceiling in the changing room. It’s also more famous so there are more foreigners there, so if you want to just be around Japanese people beware.

Why did I go to these sento so frequently? Why not just take a shower or bath in my hotel room? Well my hotel didn’t exactly have any showers, unless there are secret one’s inside McDonald’s. After my long bath at Gokou-yu, I headed for the closest McDonald’s for my first go at staying the night without a real bed.