How It Feels to Be A Foreigner In A Japanese Bathhouse

I emerged from the subway station in Ueno with a throbbing headache. Desperate for a nap, I asked around for a cheap hotel. A group of Japanese teenagers was kind enough to lead me to a building that I wouldn't have guessed was a hotel. They told me it was nice and cheap, and that was what I needed. I waved goodbye to them and headed inside.

Room 5128 on the 6th floor of the building was, in fact, a Japanese sleeping capsule. It felt as claustrophobic as a coffin. And all it had for privacy was a retractable bamboo curtain that covered the hatch. But it had everything I needed: It was cheap (Y4000), it had a pillow, a thin mattress, and even a tiny television.

With my headache not going away, I decided to take a rest.

At 10 p.m., I woke up and walked around town searching for a hot bowl of ramen. The streets and alleyways filled with pedestrians earlier were now empty except for a few stragglers. Most of the businesses were already closed, but few shops remained open, including a few restaurants serving their last customers.

I walked into a tiny ramen bar and headed straight toward a vending machine near the door. I dropped several Y100 coins for an order of tonkatsu ramen and waited by the counter. It didn't take long before a lanky waiter brought a steaming bowl to me, which I slurped in a matter of minutes. For the first time on that trip, I felt satisfied.

On my way back to the hotel, I was hassled by a man holding a clear vinyl umbrella outside the entrance. "Hey, man!" He yelled at me in a heavy Japanese accent. He approached me with a colorful catalog full of half-naked women. "Massage? Massage?" he asked me while making obscene gestures in the air. Not knowing how to say "I'd rather sleep" in Japanese, I just stuck my palms together, tilted my head, made a sleeping gesture, and walked away.

As I headed back to my room, I noticed a lot of nude ads on the walls. There was even a TV guide inside my capsule with nothing but softcore pay-per-view channels. All the nudity around me made me curious about the place I was in, but I felt too tired to investigate.

I put my pillow under my head and went to sleep again.

At around 4 a.m., I woke up with another massive headache. I badly needed a shower, so I went to the concierge and asked where the shower rooms were. "7th floor. Massage, shower 9th floor," they told me. It was yet another offer for a massage.

With a headache that wouldn't go away, it started to sound like a good idea.

I wanted to avoid any surprises, so I thought about asking about their massage services. But for a non-Japanese speaker like me, using hand gestures to inquire about what type of massage the hotel offered was not exactly a good option. So I just gave up the thought.

The place where I was staying clearly wasn't some soapland or a love hotel—popular in Japan for those who seek carnal adventures. And it was also quite obvious the capsules weren't purpose-built for intimate affairs involving more than a single occupant. Yet I couldn't help but think about all the naked ads on the wall and the shady guy that hassled me outside my building. What were they all about?

Perhaps the 9th floor had unique rooms filled with girls bouncing around in skimpy school uniforms. But then again, they could be older women in boring bleach-white uniforms hiding behind musty curtains.

I returned to my pod, grabbed fresh clothes, and climbed the stairs to the 7th floor. Three old female employees greeted me. I didn't know what to reply, so I just bowed and smiled awkwardly.

While one of the women was handing me a bunch of towels and a bathrobe, I saw a naked man walk out of the shower to grab his phone from one of the lockers.

Worried if I accidentally got up to the massage room, I asked the women again: "Is this the 7th floor?"

"7th floor shower, massage 9th floor," the old ladies told me.

Perfect. I was in the right place.

As I cautiously made my way to the shower area, the women shouted at me, "Noooo! Nooo!"

I stopped and turned around. The women giggled and gestured to take off my clothes. They kept staring at me as I stripped off every single garment I had on.

When I walked into what looked like a bathhouse, I saw at least a dozen nude men showering on tiny stools. There was a vacant spot where I could quickly shower, but I didn't want to be close to anybody naked.

So I waited.

After a good number of bathers had left, I finally walked into the shower area. But as soon as I sat on my stool, more naked bathers quickly occupied the vacant spots, and now I was stuck in the middle of two nude middle-aged men.

It was imperative to do my shower quickly. I turned on the hose and immediately rubbed soap all over my body. But there were other bathing implements beside me which I didn't know how to use, so I looked at the man next to me and observed his rituals.

His badly receding hairline made him look like some shady character in a samurai movie. I couldn't help but look at the tiny patch of hair on top of his head, and I was pretty perplexed at how rigorously he shampooed what was left of it.

"Why doesn't he just shave it all off?" I thought to myself. Then, the man suddenly looked at me with a rather vicious stare. So I quickly rinsed the soap off my body and left.

I put on my bathrobe and headed to the smoking lobby. I anxiously lit a cigarette to calm myself down. Tokyo looked beautiful from the lobby's window. The mesmerizing city lights were starting to calm me down when I noticed a balding man in a bathrobe walking in my direction—and the small patch of hair on his head looked familiar.

As the man finally entered the lobby, I stiffened up and took another drag from my cigarette. He sat down and leaned his balding head against the wall, blowing a white plume of smoke in the air as he observed me from the corner of his eye.

Not knowing how to say "Good morning" in Japanese, I tried to acknowledge him by nodding and smiling at him, but all I got in return was a rather hostile stare. I didn't know what to make of his strange look.

Our robes made us appear like a honeymooning couple smoking our post-coital cigarettes, and the man's look was that of an unsatisfied partner. I was beginning to imagine ugly thoughts when I realized I had been staring at him for too long. I immediately wiped the awkward smirk off my face and looked away.

The Japanese call people like me Gaikokujin—a "foreign country person"—and Tokyo had its peculiar ways of reminding me of that.