You can’t go to Osaka and not visit Spa World. It was my go to for cheap post-night-out accommodation at 1000 yen (about 9 US) once you arrive before 5 a.m.. On arrival, after feeding the machine, getting your ticket and exchanging your outside shoes for inside ones at the locker (don’t forget to take the key), you head up to the sauna.
More lockers.
You peel your party-sweat-soaked clothes off and throw them into one, pull the locker key band up over your bicep – around the ankle is whorish Steven – and head to the first shower. Oops! You forgot to cover your tattoo with a bandaid. If it’s on the back of your neck, like mine, just use the modesty towel (small towel only the Japanese with big dicks will hold in front of them – the nail that sticks up must be hammered down after all! You don’t want to stand out!)
The first showers remind me of foot baths for sheep to prevent foot rot because walls are on either side and it’s the only way through. It’s onsen etiquette that makes sense though, especially since I’m not the only one whose sweaty balls are coming from the club.
The Ancient Rome theme was my favourite. It’s decorated with columns, the “Mouth of Truth” and statues, including the first Roman emperor Augustus, and has a herbal bath and others you can see from the Spa World link above. With the towel provided, before you can “please enjoy”, the next stop is to plunk your tail down on one of the plastic stools (wash it off first) in front of a mirror and scrub away your sins, well…try.
Onsen Ready
I love being naked and that onsen culture desexualises nudity because there is a time for sex in spite of it. That said, the steam sauna is filled with white-haired, blotchy-skinned married men who’ll lick their lips at you if you’re left alone with them. Once, I jacked off a guy in a fully populated jacuzzi. Once, I shouted “YOU!” at a pedophile with an erection sitting watching young boys. How did no one see him? The same way no one saw that man lying on his back, on the floor, on the way from the elevator to the entrance. Seeing the way his people walked around him, I questioned whether he was asleep, but to be safe, I called a worker who realised he was dead. (He only looked dead, but had fainted).
When my brother visited, I surprised him with Spa World, but his reaction was too tempered to make me laugh. “So…you take off all your clothes now?” he asked. What a big deal we make of nudity in the West and what a statement about the power of cultural norms that we’d go from never seeing each other naked to doing so as adults without hesitation.
There is something about shared nudity that enhances closeness. It’s like a frontier of vulnerability seldom broached. We got massages lying on tables next to each other, and the women slapped our behinds to watch them giggle. “How inappropriate,” I commented, and we all laughed although they had no idea what I’d said to my brother.
My enhanced feelings of closeness (to the floor) when I saw my friend Tomás naked
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