Onsen Gaijin: Getting Stared at in the Nude

    Anyone who has been obviously foreign in Japan for more than a week will tell you that some people are just going to stare. Most people don't mean anything by it and may just be genuinely captivated by the idea that someone from another country might visit a little town. While that's all well and good, it gets really tiresome sometimes, even when you're out and about, fully dressed.

    Even after more than a decade in Japan, I feel it is much worse in the onsen. I don't get this reaction from adults generally. The oba-san-tachi (what I call the groups of old grandma types) aren't interested in making me uncomfortable when I'm already naked. Maybe they see my roundness and drooping as a normal thing that happens to adult bodies. Maybe they are just more clever about sneaking their looks.

    What gets me is the kids between the ages of 5 and 15, the ones who have, in all likelihood, had some kind of native English-speaking teacher at one of their schools sometime before now, and still think that I must be some kind of a human-hybrid, escaped from the zoo, because there's no way I could possibly tell that they are staring directly at me, tactlessly and tastelessly, mouth agape as I nakedly walk into the warm bath.

Etiquette poster from one onsen hotel in Miyagi. Notice "Don't stare at people like a mindless zombie" is absent.

    Fear and discomfort resulting from this kind of reaction is exactly why I didn't visit baths so often when I was younger. For my first five years in Japan, the only way that I would enjoy a trip to the onsen was if the ladies bath areas were otherwise unoccupied. If they were occupied, I would do what I had to do to avoid the other people and leave as quickly as I could without making my then-boyfriend now-husband upset that we had wasted an afternoon bringing me to a place where I could not or would not enjoy the only thing to do there.

    A recent trip to some onsen a few months ago afforded exactly this kind of behavior out of one girl who had to be around ten years old. When my daughter and I entered the changing area, she greeted us at the front with such wide eyes, I could only assume that her mouth was making the same shape beneath her mask. We went around her and changed, happy to find her busy showering with her family as we entered the main bathing area. When we were content to leave, we once again ran into her family, slowly drying their hair but fully capable of taking a break to gape again at the naked foreigner.

    I did what I think is the most responsible thing to do. I walked away, got changed, and left the area with my kid.

    For any other foreigners who are not keen on being stared at in the bath, one important thing to remember is that unless you are extremely unlucky, most of the people you run into while fully nude at the hot spring are not people you will ever have to interact with again. That doesn't mean that it's okay to be a jerk, but it also means that you don't have to worry terribly about people at work gossiping about your naked body. Instead, just be courteous, stay away from other people, and mind your own business. It is the best thing you can do.