The onsen incident...or: A small surprise...or: A story with which to impress

The below is obviously not something particularly recent or topical -- I just happened to have it sitting around so thought I'd paste it in. It was rejected last year by The Morning News, which I got onto via a story someone sent me about Gary Benchley, rock star. I enjoyed the Benchley series a lot at first but it seemed to lose something that it had at the beginning and I lost interest. And, of course, they rejected my story. Bastards. And fools.

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An onsen is a Japanese hot spring. Businesses have been erected around onsen throughout Japan: members of the public can pay a fee — anywhere from a few dollars upward — to bathe in the springs. They are rich in minerals and people attribute to them all sorts of medicinal and health properties.

A few years ago, I lived in Japan, teaching English in a farming prefecture in the country’s southwest. On a warm day in early autumn of 2000, I visited an onsen for the first time.

Protocol is as follows: after arriving, you enter a change room and strip naked (men and women are usually segregated). Those of modest disposition need not fear: etiquette dictates that you vaguely obscure your genitals with a small white towel. Once nude, you move through to a communal bathroom where you sit on a tiny wooden stool and wash thoroughly under a shower. You then enter the spring itself and soak to your heart’s content.

The onsen I visited with two friends, T and E, was spectacular. The pools perched on a cliff, high above the Pacific Ocean. A glorious wall of grey-blue, sea and sky, stretched out forever, dotted every now and then by gliding sea eagles.

T, an onsen veteran, had washed by the time E and I worked out we needed to return to the front desk to buy the aforementioned small white towels. When we got back to the showers, T approached and whispered that we’d be sharing the pools with a yakuza — a member of the Japanese mafia. His identity was revealed by the tattoos covering most of his torso and the absence of both his little fingers. Yakuza atone for indiscretions by ritually removing bits of their little fingers, joint-by-joint.

Although we discussed him excitedly in schoolboy whispers, he ignored us. The soak was glorious — hot and invigorating, with wet-season rain falling on us as we gazed seaward.

After an hour, we heaved ourselves out and headed back to the change rooms. Our yakuza friend was there, sitting on a bench, drying himself. As I passed, still nude, I heard him grunt — a guttural, elongated “eehhh!” Assuming this wasn’t directed at me, I kept walking. Upon a second, louder “EEEHHHH!!”, I looked towards him.

He pointed at my genitals (despite my small white towel), smirked and made a “small” symbol with his forefinger and thumb.

I was — understandably, I think — lost for words. The first response that crossed my mind was the Japanese for “you too”. A couple of things held me back:

1. Without my glasses on, I would have had to stick my face half-way into his nether-regions to confirm this.
2. I am so not tough and he was a hardcore member of an organized crime syndicate.

Instead, in a nervous, probably cracking voice, I spat out “er … uh … daijobu…” Loosely, this translates as, “Hey, um, it’s OK, it’s cool.”

Then he left alone and I decided that I should tell the story because if nothing else it would make people think about my genitals. And, surely, that’s a good thing.