Once you’re past the puzzling, knee-high showers, the pools are actually quite nice. Steph and I were left figuring out how to cover our tits and front bums with one arm, while holding the modesty towel over our backsides with the other. Mum, my aunt and Grandma had no issues stripping off as soon as we entered the change rooms and making a beeline for the showers near the entrance.įortunately, I didn’t have long to ponder the burning visual of their pale bottoms entering the water. You leave all your belongings in the change room and the only thing you can bring with you into the onsen is your modesty towel. The rule is that you must undress completely and shower before entering the water. I stared at my tiny scrap of linen trying to calculate how I could cover all areas of potential humiliation.Įxactly how much “modesty” was this towel supposed to engender? Unfortunately this towel turned out to be no larger than an A4 sheet of paper. We would also receive a “modesty towel” to cover ourselves as we entered the onsen, Mum told us. We wouldn’t have to strip down in front of random men or, worse, my incessant tease of a male cousin. Mum had managed to quell our anxiety by assuring Steph and me that onsens were separate for men and women. Kate said the idea of getting naked in front of her grandmother was “horrifying”. Getting nude in front of our aunt and grandma, and possibly even Japanese strangers, was horrifying. Sure, we’d bathed nude as children and occasionally saw our family members in birthday suits - but that was a long time ago.Īs early teenagers we were reaching what was surely the developmental peak of self-conscious body awareness. Steph was 12 and clearly no more excited than I to expose her adolescent wobbly bits, or to view those of our older family members, in a public arena. The uncomfortable drawback was that we’d have to go naked. Grandma had told us about the abundance of hot springs, known as onsens, in Japan after she and Grandpa had travelled there a few years earlier.Īfter spending all day on ski chairlifts in howling blizzards and minus 15-degree weather, the idea of laying back in a natural spa with snow falling around seemed pretty damn inviting. We were all on a family ski trip to Niseko ski resort on the north island of Japan, Hokkaido. An Allman family portrait in Japan, taken just before things got weird.
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