This is a work of pure fiction. All persons and events herein are fictional. Any and all resemblance to actual persons and events is purely coincidental. Persons portrayed are 18 years of age and older. Please comment.
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The chilly late March night air seeped through the cedar walls of the changing room. The four of us were spending the three-day weekend in rural Kumamoto with an onsen tour. Perennial yellow grass carpeted the area near the foothills of the Kuju Mountains and Mt. Aso, surrounding the volcanic landscape slashed through with swaths of forest located near the frontier of Oita Prefecture. The area is rich in natural springs warmed with geothermal heat making it into a popular resort area and tourist destination. Not that you could see any of it in the inky darkness surrounding our remote pension.
This particular pension, undoubtedly like many others, had a private onsen bath on the outside. You could reserve a block of time during the evening, or pop in if it was free in the morning. Just having come back from a bit of sightseeing and a late dinner, I signed up for the last slot. Laura and Dee were tired and decided to wait for the next day of our excursion for their turn. As the driver, I didn't have time to get a shower before I gathered everyone for our trip, so I was feeling a bit gross. I had just sat down on the ice cold bathing stool on the other side of the change room to prepare for my soak when the door opened. Nick was standing in the entrance holding his small towel to his chest with one hand, and his other covering his genitals.
"Jeez, it's freezing," he said through chattering teeth as he toddled over the cold stone to the second stool. "Now, how do I do this?"
It was Nick's first time coming to a Japanese hot spring, so he was understandably confused and nervous. We had to convince him a bit to come and wear him down a little more to get him to commit to trying the baths. Tonight was something of a crash course in etiquette and customs.
"Did you use the bathroom? There's no peeing in the bath." It was a joke, but you never know with some people.
"Yeah," he said sitting down. "Now what?"
"You can put your towel to the side, and start getting your body wet with the buckets," I said. I filled one bucket with water from the tap and poured it over my shoulder. Nick followed suit as we poured buckets of hot water on ourselves. "Now, wash your body. Are you going to wash your hair too?"
"Yeah, I might."
"Do that after the bath. You're going to sweat, so it's going to get dirty again. If you're planning to wash it again tomorrow, wait for the last one."
"Sure thing." Nick pumped some body wash into his hand and lathered his body as I did the same. Being an old hat at it, I pretty unabashedly spread the soap over myself, while Nick was more furtive. "This is so weird."
"Trust me, after the first time in daylight, it's going to be less awkward."
"I didn't really grow up with nudity, y'know," he said. "No one in PD-H-PE showered and we just got changed as quickly as possible."
"Not even your brothers? You shared a room and never saw each other?"
"Nope."
"I have two sisters, and there wasn't any time to get showered after gym class, so casual nudity wasn't that common for me either, " I said. "I took a life drawing class though. It desensitized me to nudity pretty quickly. The first five minutes are the most awkward, and after that it's like whatever. Same with the onsen." I took the shower head down and turned it on. I was shivering. "Use the shower to wash off the soap. It's easier to get everything. Just try not to have it go crazy."
"Okay." He grimaced as the water from his shower hit him. "This isn't all that warm."
We continued to rinse ourselves off in silence.
"And now, to get into the bath."
The bath itself, like many onsen, was in-ground, lined with a natural-looking stonescape. The hot water was fed into the pool through a pipe covered in a bamboo stalk. A few small lights in the surrounding garden gave just enough light to see by. The lights from the pension peaked over the tall wooden privacy fence. The hazy vapor hung above it like a thin mist. It was big enough for maybe three adults. Group bathing isn't rare in Japan, despite how it is back in America, or as it seemed to be in Australia. Sometimes it takes an extended stay away from home to get you out of your comfort zone, I guess.
We entered the hot water and hissed between our teeth.
"Blimey, that's hot," Nick said. "It feels like my toes are going to boil off."
"Yeah," I said. I steeled myself and sat down. The hot water went up to my shoulders in a rush and the heat quickly swept into my core. "Fuck yeah... Sit down, man."
Nick grimaced again and sat. "Jesus!" Then, his face immediately relaxed and a goofy grin spread across his face.
I laughed. "Someone likes it."
"Yeah. Good shout, mate." He let out a chuckle.
It was still too early in the year for there to be insects or frogs, so we sat in the quiet night for a little while. A gentle breeze rustled the foliage of the garden plants. I watched Nick's face as he reclined against the edge of the pool, eyes closed. He looked so blissful.
I had been teaching English for the past ten years in Japan, mostly in rural areas, although this year I transferred a bit closer to one of the larger cities in Miyazaki Prefecture. It's still considered the countryside where I am, but there is an area that could definitely be called "downtown." My last assignment wasn't too far away from where I am now, so I was lucky to keep most of my old acquaintances and my place. Nick, one of the new teachers in the area who came in September, always wanted to travel to Japan and could finally afford to take time off for the trip. Since it was an opportune weekend I invited him along. I've been to onsen quite a few times in the past few years. We - us English teachers - usually decide to make a trip with any sort of freetime we get, since most of us came to Japan with travel in mind.
Nick was originally hired into my new board of education, but the way our contracts are structured because of Japanese employment laws, if there aren't enough schools, we need to be moved to a new BOE after three years. So, I'd be working in the city where Nick was now, and he would be moving into my old schools and taking my position in April.
I filled him in on the lay of the land as best as I could. Usually there isn't this much time in a handover, so we made the most of it. I prepared the year's curriculum and saved a bunch of worksheets, PowerPoints and things for him to use as well as giving him the lowdown on teachers and problem students. The Japanese teachers move every few years for equitable access to education, but the general feel of the schools stays the same. We've become thick as thieves in the past six months. Most weekends we hung out, usually getting dinner on Friday nights or doing something on a Saturday. We spent a lot of time together as we were close - we, the self-designated old men of the group, both being in our thirties and looking to change careers. Him from IT, and me from insurance into teaching.
"So, I gotta say, I'm a little nervous about next week," Nick confided to me the weekend before our trip. We were doing our weekly booze up and dinner. We settled on yakiniku - Korean barbecue.
"Yeah? About what?"
"Well... um... It's like a locker room, right? A bunch of naked dudes and everything's on display..."
"Uh-huh." I took the bits of meat and vegetables off of the grill and divided them up between the two of us. The smell of cooked meat, beer and a faint waft of tobacco smoke filled the small partitioned room we were in. I was waiting for him to spit whatever he was building up to out and I didn't want to rush him, but couldn't resist teasing. "Worried about size?"
"Ye-what? No! No. Maybe I would have been in the past, actually - but not that. I was kind of chubby up until freshman year in college, so I was teased for that, and... ummm..."
I took the pause to kill my second beer and started my third.
