Patricia Loison's onsen experience
The contradictory dimension of onsen
Journalist Patricia Loison confronted one of the Japanese traditions that can quickly become a real challenge for Westerners: the onsen.
“On-sen”
The word sounds like two drops of water, splashes like a spring in our ears, presages a deceptive freshness as spring begins to warm our skins deliciously.
If this Japanese term looks like a tinkerbell at first sight, it's the better to attract to its burning lair ...
Because the onsen make you hot, redden the skin and sometimes turn heads in their vapors.
These are indeed springs, but hot. They rise from this earth stirred up by the work of the faults of Japan .
My first experience was cinematographic.
I did not realize my luck!
We were finishing the filming of an episode of “ Faut Pas Rêver ” on the little-known islands of the Japanese archipelago . Stopover in Yakushima, made famous by the movie “Princess Mononoke ”. The moss forest where the wolves ride is Yakushima.
To read: Yakushima, the island of thousand-year-old cedars
A volcano covered with pine trees, resting on the Pacific Ocean. Fresh above, sylvan, and bare below, the thick black rock, like a beach, surrounds it like a collar.
“We are going to do the end shot here, you in the natural swimming pool, the mountains in front, the sea behind”.
I confess to being moderately enthusiastic at the idea of launching myself into a Victoria's Secret fashion show in the barefoot plus size Angel version on the rocks, in front of the team.
I will only be filmed in the water. But I want to keep my swimsuit. Chimerical modesty, at the end of the show, only my head sticks out...
The swimsuit: that's what my friends from Paris who come to visit us ask me.
“But can we keep our bathing suit…? »
-Nope…
" The bottom ? »
- Nope…
"Panties...?" »
-Nope…
The onsen or hot baths put us up against the wall…the locker room.
Who would've believed that… ?
The Japanese dressed to the nines, the Japanese in shorts large over their leggings when they run to camouflage their forms – non-existent… revenge of the plus-size Angel. Grandmothers hidden behind their peaked caps in summer and gloved up to the elbow… everyone, young, old, tall, short, skinny, plump, beautiful, ugly, is asked to bathe in the simplest device .
Japan loves instructions, this is reminded on a poster: no bathing suit, no underwear, no terrycloth towels immersed in water. Nothing.
The. More. Simple. Device.
Anything but simple.
See also: Onsen, a guide to good manners
My daughters and I, like others before us, have succumbed to the temptation of the micro-towel in a cache-sex when pushing the door of these giant hammams . We undressed awkwardly, writhing behind our bath sheets. But we are the only ones. And as with nudists no doubt, lagêne changes sides. It's us, clinging to our centimeters of fabric, who are ridiculous.
From changing rooms to bathrooms, grannies, little girls, teenagers, mums stroll as nature made them.
A surprising airlock in this Japan so corseted, where good manners, the rule, prevail over everything, all the time. Suddenly, in the hot water, enveloped in steam, we let go, we splash. As I step into the tub of fresh water that is always available, a septuagenarian explains to me that I have to move forward suddenly and punctuates her explanation with a splash of water. Alert, the grannies are heckling! Little boys admitted up to six years old on the women's side, cries of joy in the largest pool.
Some complexes have theme days : there dozens of multicolored ducks, here rooms scented with rosemary in muslin sachets, rose water dripping from the ceiling.
The experience begins in the showers. Here, we scrub from head to toe before immersing ourselves . The last time, I paced for a quarter of an hour while the women in front of me cleared the little stools installed in a row in front of the showers, after having soaped up, shampooed, taken care of their skin and their hair…
It is absolutely clean whether you slip into water that is transparent or loaded with minerals, gray or golden.
Because it's not just the pleasure – mixed onsen were banned after the arrival of the Americans – here, we soak up usefulness. In Arima, a spa town above Kobe, the springs are recommended for treating rheumatism, cold allergies, fragile stomachs, etc.
To read: Arima onsen, the source of all pleasures
I took advantage of coppery water, almost spangled, with between the bamboo palisades, the wooded sides of the mountain.
At the foot of Koyasan , another gave off a sulphurous scent . And the stones in the pool had changed color from gray to copper.
Like the Roman baths, the places lend themselves to confidence, to complicity .
My mother-in-law and I, stark naked and without glasses, enjoyed a pocket onsen in the grounds of a temple, savoring the cool night air .
Our children cried with joy when a friend, after a day of skiing, threw herself into the snow that surrounded the outdoor pool , leaving the imprint of her body with her arms crossed in the powder snow.
You can nest in a kind of giant vase for one person , filled with lukewarm water, with your children curled up against you. There are deckchairs dug in the stone, to stretch out, a cool towel placed on the forehead. Friends gossip, grannies remake the world.
The onsen are a world apart , another window on Japan, a barometer of their love of cleanliness, their conception of relaxation, their relationship to the body, their taste for water.
If you pass by the archipelago, behind the perfect folds of the obi on the kimono , behind the bow of the vendors of Gion, behind the symmetry of the tea ceremony, push the wooden door into the street, attracted by the smell of the thermal water, go down to the hot baths of your hotel, and dive into the gentle madness of the onsen ...
