For many of you who’ve stepped foot on Japanese soil before, I bet there was one thing that you didn’t do while you were here. It’s something that most of us are not accustomed to. It even borders on absurdity. And I know that if I tell this to some of my friends back home, they’ll say it sounds a little wrong as well. While I’m sure you can find similar practices in other parts of the world, in my case I experienced it right here in Japan. It was a culture shock of sorts. I don’t know what we usually call it back home (because it’s so uncommon nobody actually bothered to come up with a term), but here they simply call it ‘public shower’.

Public Shower | Narrowband.org Images

You see, our tanker was docked at one of the country’s gas terminals, where we’d be spending 4-5 days before leaving again. On-board accommodation was provided (crew’s cabins), but the rule was that we must not take our shower while the tanker was docked there to avoid unhygienic discharge of water from the tanker. A daily shuttle service was therefore arranged to take us to a public shower nearby. We did consider the possibility that the so-called public shower was all but a covered one, where there would be individual cubicles, where we could scrub ourselves without a second, third, or n-th pair of eyes admiring our sacred anatomies. Still, we had no idea, and so we hoped for the best.

As it turned out, the bus took us to our cleansing sanctuary where we - three Malaysians - would stand tall, eye to eye (sort of), shoulder to shoulder, men among men, face to face, scrubbing our bare buttocks in steaming hot shower together with our Japanese counterparts. Together. In one common shower room. And to make matters worse, we had actually left our towels in our cabin, on the ship. Yeah wtf were we thinking; that we’d be chauffeured to some five-star spa? So we went to the counter and asked if they sold towels. I was delighted to learn they did, though I’d have been happier if they’d told me they had covered bathrooms, so we could be spared from the public display (a very visual one, no less) of raw masculinity.

Anyway, the towels they sold were more like large handkerchiefs - not even enough to wrap around my body. Also, the cloth was too thin to absorb water. Understandably, the towels weren’t meant for wiping ourselves dry. But we had no choice. That night would mark the first time ever that I bared my all in front of (many) strangers. True to the Malaysia Boleh spirit, after some deliberation, we muttered “Ah fuck it lah”, and took off our shirts, pants, and undies together with the rest. Which. Was. Absolutely. Uncool. We left our stuff on the racks and dashed right in to the spacious, steamy steaming shower room. I tried not to glance at anyone’s anything. I barely succeeded.

There were stools on which we could sit, and a shower hose was available for each of them. There wasn’t much clearance between one stool and another, so if someone were to bathe right next to me, he’d be really near. After settling down in our own spot, we turned on the taps and tested the water. To our horror, the water temperature was fixed at 45 degrees Celcius! Holy smoke (pun unintended)! While the steam worked well in fogging up the windows, we’d rather use a lower temperature because obviously 45 degrees wasn’t gonna be very kind to our little fellas. The whole place was pretty much blanketed in steam. Then suddenly, one of us found the showers at the corner of the room to be a little different.

They were fixed for standing position (ie. no hose or stools), and the cold water tap was working. But like they say, good things don’t come abundantly. There were only a few of those, and all were occupied. I wasn’t gonna queue and wait. Standing, at that. So I resorted to the good ol’ stool, and held the shower at an arm’s length away, such that the water would form an arc before reaching my skin. I would turn the shower away when my skin felt like it was gonna be baked. Given the distance traveled by the water through air, coupled with the larger skin area on which it hit, the water somehow didn’t feel so hot anymore. Makes sense right??

In the end we were glad we hadn’t chickened out. We needed that bath because we had had a long day. We left the newly-bought, large handkerchiefs on the racks, packed our stuff and headed for the waiting bus. We rode back to the terminal in an awkward silence.

Shorttalk: I’m beginning to feel really bored now. We’ve been having bento set for every single meal. We work everyday. And I now have nothing to do at night in my cabin because I’ve just finished reading the Kite Runner (no I’ve not watched the movie yet!). I should have brought along another book… No Internet, no life, it feels like prison. We’ll stay on board for about 1 more week before disembarking. I miss home already.

P/s. This entry is published wirelessly via 3G on Docomo network (and I’m still roaming with Maxis!). Anyway, praise the fellow who invented 3G and web-surfing handphones!

Related Entries: