When in Rome, go naked as the Romans do

About twenty minutes away from me, there's a complex of health-related buildings. There's a gym, with a very nice indoor pool, and a room with exercise machines. There's a few treadmills, some bikes, and weight training machines. Use of the machines is $5 for one visit, or $30 for a month.

Outside, there's a track and a playground with the awesomest swingsets and jungle gyms ever. Man, I wish I were a kid sometimes. There's also something that tries very hard to be a golf course, even going so far as to call itself golf. The "course," however, is laid out like jumbo-sized mini-golf: players strike their ball down an uneven, fairway-ish plot of land, using clubs somewhere between a putter and a wedge. I would have been crestfallen, but I've already experienced misleading advertising regarding golf courses in Asia.

The main attraction, though, is the onsen, or hot springs. It's similar to a Turkish bath, a couple of which I visited in Budapest. Yes, you get naked, yes, the areas where you're naked are sex-segregated, and no, it's not that weird. Using the onsen costs about $5, and that gives you all-day access to the main so-hot-it's-steaming pool, the 15°C/60°F pool, the 37°C/100°F sauna, and the 48°C/120°F sauna.

I went there back in May with a couple of the other ALTs. Sure enough, I soon learned that it's only awkward if you make it that way: nobody else cares that everyone's nekkid, and at any rate, everyone carries a small modesty towel. There were a lot of Korean tourists there that day, and Aaron and I got some stares from them, but they were the same you-ain't-from-around-here looks we get even when we're not naked.

Just about the only awkward part was seeing some of my 10th-graders stroll in.

They of course weren't fazed by it, though there was a slight pause when we saw each other. Most of the time, when I pass students at school or in town, they eagerly greet me, sometimes in Japanese but usually in English. (Most of the girls wave, which may or may not be because I always give a dorky wave in return, usually making them giggle.) Anyhow, the instant I saw my students, my instinct was to give the usual "hello." However, all parties involved aren't usually naked. The situation felt a tad different, so I sort of missed a beat. What made it more amusing was that each of them was clearly going through the same dilemma. We settled on a curt nod.