Getting Naked in Front of Strangers in Japan
Going to Japanese onsens taught me that no one was judging me as much as I thought.
Nothing taught me that no one was paying as much attention to me as I thought as getting naked in Japanese bathhouses (onsens) in front of a bunch of strangers.
As Tracy Luk had written about how onsens made her more comfortable in her own skin, my experience in onsens was probably a lot simpler. I was 20 years old, living in Japan during the summer while working in an organic chemistry lab. My labmates bought me to an onsen and I had no idea what we were doing until we got into a locker room and everyone started getting naked and walking naked into a bathhouse.
I was completely startled. It was uncomfortable enough for me to get naked for five seconds in a locker room as I changed into running clothes — and now I had to stay naked for an hour or two at a time?
Normally, I would have said “hell no.” But the peer pressure of both male adults and teenagers who did it without a second thought would have made me stand out more if I didn’t get naked and go into an onsen with strangers.
As an American Chinese adult, it wasn’t something we were used to doing, but I had been in saunas in my university before with older, naked men who…
