Explore everyday life in Japan
Fireplaces and chimneys are rare in Japan. So if you happen to see a tall chimney sticking out between buildings or poking out above the tiled rooftops of houses while walking through the older residential areas of Japanese towns and cities, chances are, you have a found a neighborhood sentou, or bathhouse.
While newer sentou can be quite large and popular, often having a combination of indoor and outdoor baths, a sauna, a dining area, and massage rooms, the older sentou that are still tucked into the folds of old neighborhoods, tend to be quite small and simple. They often have two very similar rooms (one for men and the other for women), both of which have a wall of showers and a communal bathing pool that is built against the back wall of the sentou (in western Japan, these sentou are more likely to have the bathing pool in the middle of the room).
If you walk past an old sentou in the evening, you may find two or three elderly men or women standing just outside the entrance of the sentou talking. One or more of them may be standing over a walker. Or, perhaps, one or more of them will be bent over nearly double, holding themselves up with the help of a cane. You may even see an elderly person passing by on a bicycle with a cloth bag that has pajamas and a towel in it bouncing around in the bike’s front basket. Or, you may only find a few pairs of shoes neatly lined up at the entranceway, often with their toes pointing outward away from the lockers that are built into the wall of the sentou's foyer.
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting regular updates about life in Japan, please consider following me at @boxcarblue. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.
There is an huge amount of Fuji-sans painted on the bathhouse end wall. Sometimes near, sometimes far, sometimes half-hidden clouds.
There was even a website just for the different Fujis but I can't find it atm.
If you google sentou Mt. Fuji pictures, a lot of examples come up. Here is one of them.
I'm quite familiar with the sentou. The first place we lived in Osaka actually did not have a shower, if you can believe that! So we would shower outside! Then in October we graduated to the sentou. What an experience! haha
That's pretty wild. No shower or bath? I've yet to enter a place like that in Japan. The pictures in this post are of a sentou that is right around the corner from my house. I often pass it while taking my kids for walks and I've never seen young people entering or leaving it. I often wonder why people still use it, but I imagine it has to do with old habits and maybe even social rituals for the elderly people living in my neighborhood.
I enjoy going to the bathhouses here too, but when I go to them, I often go to larger and newer ones across town that have a variety of pools and relaxation rooms, etc. The sentou I frequent the most is always full of kids and families. The one in my neigborhood, like I said, never seems to be.
Oh wow I love Japan!! But is it true that you have to change your shoes inside the house if you want to go to the toilet?
Of course it's optional, but yes, there are generally slippers in the bathrooms of houses and apartments here for you to wear while you are using them. Nobody wears their shoes inside here, though. They are always taken off in the foyer as you enter the house. You can then wear slippers in the house if you want to. These slippers are different from the toilet slippers. Many people just move through their houses in socks, though.
Alright nice, well I heard a lot about it. But in general I think it's much more hygenical)) thanks for your reply
Personally, I don't bother putting the toilet slippers on at my house, but I do at other people's houses. I don't know if that's normal or not. I also know that when visitors come to my house they use the slippers in our bathroom because they get moved to a new place.
Just really interesting to get these little glimpses into everyday Japan.
Thanks for all of your feedback. I'm glad you're enjoying these posts.
Nice glimpse of japan!
Thanks!
Another great curiosity of Japan!! Super!! :)
A very enjoyable experience!