I'm interested in places that fully envelop you — that make you forget the outside world exists. In 2016, we visited such a place in Tokyo.
An onsen is a traditional Japanese hot-spring bathing facility.
Onsens are typically segregated by gender and fully nude. Some are outdoors in a more natural environment, while others pipe the hot-spring water into pools indoors. Some have affiliated ryokan inns for overnight visits.
Odaiba Ooedo-Onsen Monogatari is a small onsen 'theme park' (for lack of a better word) on the artificial Tokyo bay island of Odaiba.
You take the fully-automated Yurikamome train from mainland Tokyo to the island of Odaiba.
This is the first step in "unreality" — the driverless train trip is a magic portal from hectic Tokyo to a much quieter island a few minutes away.
The island houses a lot of interesting, colossal architecture and is a lot less populated than downtown Tokyo, further enhancing the feeling of "unreality".
The outside of the building is pretty bland, and not around anything else interesting. Kind of a dull, semi-industrial business district on the end of the island.
You enter, approach the counter, and receive an appropriately sized yukata (light casual kimono). You're also given a locker key and a wristband with RFID tag that is used to pay for services and concessions inside.
The locker room is just a standard locker room. You put your phone, wallet, normal clothes, etc into the locker and walk through the next door with only your yukata robe and magic RFID wristband.
You step out into the main hall. It's meant to emulate a Japanese market, perhaps during some summer festival.
You're indoors, but the lighting and painted roof do a great job of tricking your brain into feeling like it's much later in the day, and outdoors. It may only be 4PM in the real world, but you immediately feel like you're staying out late enjoying festivities.
The main hall is only about the size of a high school gymnasium — not huge! But it feels big enough, and cozy, and intimate. It's filled with little stalls selling ramen, or tchotchkes, or hosting cute carnival games to win prizes. Staff also do performances, dances, stories, etc on some cadence.
You notice that the pageantry of it all sucks people in. You kind of feel like you're playing a part — you're in costume after all. And everyone else is also playing a part. Everyone lets themselves get hypnotized into the illusion that they're really in this summer festival night market. And that subtle social reinforcement creates a powerful feedback loop.
There's an outdoor section outside the main hall that has wading pools, more lanterns, walking paths, etc. The inside seemed more popular with families, but we noticed more young couples in the outdoor section sitting close with their feet in the water under the warm light.
This may partially be due to the baths themselves being gender-segregated, so this spot is the best place to share a moment with your significant other — away from the more carnival-like atmosphere indoors.
I didn't take a camera into the bathing area, since it's fully nude, and there aren't any after-hours photos I can find of it online, so I'll do my best to describe the layout:
You enter your gender's bathing area from the main hall. There's a small locker room where you store your yukata robe and get a towel. You enter the main bathing area and first see a set of rows little showers with stools. You sit on a stool and use the detachable showerhead to clean yourself.
The room has a fairly large central pool, about waist-deep, at ambient temperature. Around it are smaller pools that vary from ice-plunge to mega-hot. There is also a steam room and a sauna.
In general, the aesthetic is basically like any health club, but with way more pool temperature variety.
A door leads outside to a medium-hot bath in a more "natural" environment: plants, stone pool, open sky, etc. Every few minutes you can hear a woman giggle over the wall to their similar outdoor area.
This was my first time being nude around a lot of people — probably 50 or so ranging from boys to grandpas. I'd been to a nude beach once in Hawaii, but it just had a few old hippies baking in the sun. This was different, much more of a mainstream cultural institution.
Watching the old men relax and converse in the hot tub, fathers and sons getting into the cold-plunge together, and the guys my age having a good time talking about girls, life, whatever.
There's something to be said about being fully nude with your bros with no women around — it removes all pretension.
The nudity also further enhanced the other-worldly feeling. The first few portals had mostly been physical: the train, the island, the theming. Then you hit the vibe-portal of everyone playing a character in their yukata robes and sandals. Then you hit the next vibe-portal of social nudity and relaxing with the guys. Unreality sets in, the outside world ceases to exist.
When we got back to the states, I looked to see if the US had some Japanese-style bathhouses. In our area, there's one for women, but all the mens bathhouses are not exactly what I was looking for.
There are, of course, non-nude health-club type spas, but I feel these lack the vibe the of the onsen, especially if they are mixed-gender. Guys are trying to look good shirtless for the women. And even if you aren't trying, other guys are, and that changes how they interact. Vibe killer!
Male nude swimming was actually totally normal and common in the US until racial desegregation and continued in some universities until the 1970s.
You leave the baths and stop by one of the food stalls to get some ramen or teriyaki. Drink a crisp Asahi. Lounge around. Stroll outside. Go back in the baths. Come back out, play a carnival game. Eat another snack. Baths again.
Soon enough 6 hours have passed, but you feel like the outside world must have been frozen this whole time. You go back into the locker room, change into your normal clothes, check in your RFID wristband to pay the final bill (totally reasonable amounts, unlike Disney).
Then you walk back out onto the street. It's night. Catch the train back to Tokyo. What just happened? Why did this slightly hokey theme park make such an impact on my life? We may never know.
Unfortunately, the business was built on Tokyo municipal land which has a maximum lease period of 20 years and was demolished a few years ago. The same company operates other similar businesses, though — we'll have to try one next time we visit Japan!
Thanks to Patrick McKenzie for recommending we visit this place, it was a highlight of the trip.