All Things Bright and Beautiful

After leaving the center on Friday, a bunch of people decided to head to the sento, which surprisingly was open. It’s a pretty efficient system, but not what I expected. When we first walked in there were lockers in which to put your shoes. You then take out the key, which locks the locker. Tickets were about 370 yen, which is close to $3.70. ($1=110yen or so). We then went into a locker room type area, complete with mirrors, lockers, and even a salon style hair dryer. After getting undressed and collecting your soap, shampoo, and washcloth (which you can bring or rent from the sento), you head into the baths. You take a bowl and a tiny stool and sit at one of the spots along the wall. These spaces are marked with a showerhead, a mirror, and cold and hot water spigots. Using your bowl and washcloth, you wash yourself in a room full of other people doing the same. It is a very shocking experience, especially with me being from the Western world where nudity is a taboo. All of these women were very comfortable in their bodies. I only saw one girl cover herself as she walked through the baths. After washing yourself, there are a multitude of baths to choose from. In the center of the shower room there was a medicine bath which was a rosy color and smelled like flowers and a very, very hot bath. There was also a private bath, which was enclosed in glass, a sauna, and a spa chair. Down the hall there was a cold bath which was too cold to get into, and an outdoor bath. I had to try them all! I think my favorite was the outdoor bath, because it was beautiful. Dark stones covered the inside of the bath, surrounded by a tall fence which opened up to a starry nighttime sky. The cold night made mist rise up from the hot water, refreshing my face. A bunch of us spent a good while outside, talking to each other and relaxing. They say you don’t know clean until you’ve known the sento. I would argue that it wasn’t as good for washing my hair, since the showerheads were not working the night that we went, but the rest of my body really did feel very clean. It is practice to rinse oneself off between different types of baths, so I spent a lot of time pouring bowls of water over myself, which was great. I think the worst part was the walk home, which was slightly cold. Most people decided to go straight home, but I went to hang out with one of the guys who wasn’t going immediately to sleep. He showed me this fantastic magazine produced in New York about Middle Eastern art. It was beautiful. The graphics and the stories were all really well done, and there were very few advertisements. Really attractive graphic elements were scattered throughout the magazines, and the photo spreads were really appealing. It is very obvious that the magazine is not meant to show fashion trends, even in the fashion section, but instead to make an art out of making a magazine. I really want to borrow one of them sometime soon so that I can read the stories a little more closely. Also, I think that I should find out where to buy them so that I could give one to Bryan and Anthony when I go back home. After looking at the magazines for a good while, the guy showed me a really interesting collection of independent cartoons, which really sparked my interest. Some of the textures and colors startled me. The cartoons were made out of everything from ink to papier-mâché. And a lot of them had really beautiful stories that read almost like poetry. These were certainly not “the funnies” that you’d get in a local paper, but I loved them. Apparently, there is a second edition coming out soon, and I think that I will have to consider buying it, if only for the joy of discovering what else can be done in a short cartoon.

Music of the day: Sigur Ros
Major purchase: sento ticket
Meditation/ inspiration/ thought of the day: Nudity, how it exists as a taboo in America and is more accepted in Japan.
Top priority: buying a bike