Dating Underwater7. Like Cocoon, But Everyone's Naked

Miyajima mostly shuts down at night. The restaurants and bars stay open after dark, but even they close early by city standards. Most people only take day trips to the island, most likely since Hiroshima is so close. The last ferry leaves well before midnight.

Hisoka had a dinner reservation waiting for us at the hotel before we got back. It was another Japanese meal, but more elaborate than what I had for lunch. In the village, I had rice and soup. At the hotel, they brought us entirely too much food. There was more rice and soup, of course, and noodles, pickled vegetables, steamed vegetables, intricately plated salads, seaweed as a dish and as seasoning. Unlike the standard steamed white rice that comes with every Chinese meal, this rice was larger and cooked with some type of green herb.

My impression was that this was probably the most authentic Japanese meal I have ever eaten. I have been to Tokyo, but there is a lot of foreign influence in the capital, and it is harder to avoid the tourist food. Miyajima does not seem the least bit interested in trying to be anything other than purely Japanese. There are plenty of tourists during the day, but most of them looked Japanese. Unfortunately, I could not taste any of the food I had on the island. Most of the time, having a numbed sense of taste is relatively easy to ignore. Going to a new place, especially one as culturally genuine as Miyajima, gets a little depressing at meal times.

After dinner, which neither of us were ever going to come close to finishing, Hisoka wanted to try out the hot springs. I had no objection to that. It was great in the morning. It should be just as great at night. My only issue, which I never bothered to articulate, was that we were supposed to be on a date. The most time we spent together was on the mountain and in the taxi ride from the airport. Mt Misen was exceptionally beautiful, but not particularly romantic. To me, romance is not gasping for breath and almost collapsing from exhaustion. Well, maybe under different circumstances, but not hiking up a mountain. We had a nice dinner, but now we were going off to separate hot springs. I think people should at least be in the same room on a date.

Before heading to our segregated locker rooms, Hisoka asked me if I had any tattoos. That might seem like a strange question, but this hot spring, as well as many others throughout Japan, did not allow anyone with tattoos inside. It is a universal rule that has several different explanations, depending whom you ask, but no one bothered to ask me the first time I went in. Not that it mattered. I have never liked tattoos and have no intention of ever getting one.

The women's shower/locker room was more crowded than it had been earlier, but not crowded enough for me to get self-conscious. I knew the routine and followed all of the proper etiquette. Just like every other woman who walked out of the locker room, I had a towel wrapped around my body. The indoor pool was just as empty as before. I think it might only be popular when it's raining.

The big surprise for me was in the outdoor pools. I saw Hisoka and a few other men as well as all of the women who walked out of the locker room. The other women went to whichever pools they preferred, dropped their towels and climbed in. I'm almost certain that they saw all of the men already there. In fact, more than a few women talked to some of the men.

I stood in front of my favorite pool, gripping my towel where the edges overlapped. Even if a typhoon suddenly struck the island, that towel was not coming off. When Hisoka saw me through the steam, he waved to get my attention. He motioned for me to come to his pool, but I had a few problems with that. It looked like all of the men were naked, although you never really know what's under water. Either way, I was naked under my towel. And if the dress code was not bad enough, he was in the rice cooker pool.

When he stood up in his pool, I had a decision to make. Do I look away or do I stare? I was curious, of course, but this was not the appropriate place to ogle men. Or perhaps it was the perfect place. There was steam rising from each pool, more from the hottest one. The hot springs had steam in the morning, but it was colder at night, and more difficult to see people through the mist.

It never mattered since Hisoka expertly positioned his tiny washcloth in front of himself as he stepped out of the pool. That was when I noticed that all of the men had tiny washcloths either near them on the edge of the hot springs or on their heads like white barets. I watched a woman get out of one pool, wrap her towel on, walk to another pool and drop the towel before climbing in. Under the water, everyone was naked as sin. The second anyone got out of the water, modesty prevailed and they covered their shame with whichever size towel they had.

Hisoka was covered, barely, when he walked toward me. He asked if I wanted to use a different pool. He assumed that my hesitation was solely about the temperature. I asked him why the men were not on the men's side, wherever that was. He laughed a little and explained that unlike most hot springs in Japan's largest cities, these rural springs were not segregated. The showers were and everyone covered themselves outside of the water, more or less, because that was the only decent and civilized thing to do. But the springs themselves were unisex.

I thought the men's hot springs were somewhere else and that I was on the women's side earlier in the day. Looking back, that was a stupid assumption. The hotel grounds would have to be considerable to have twice as many hot springs. With a mountain next to the springs and a road next to the hotel, there was no place to put anything else.

Hisoka saw nothing unusual about our environment, but he recognized that I am American. My ancestors were such religious extremists that they thought Catholicism was too liberal. He suggested we leave the hot springs altogether, but I told him that was crazy. The reason we came to Miyajima, the reason I flew to Japan, was for the hot springs. I loved it earlier in the day when I was alone with the old woman. I reasoned that I should love it again, even if there were other people around.

Something that really helped was how old everyone was. Had the hot springs been full of 20-something men/boys, I can almost guarantee I would have gone back to the locker room to get dressed. As it was, Hisoka looked like the youngest man there and I was likely the youngest woman. I'm generally a pretty terrible judge of Japanese ages, but most of the people in the water that night were hovering around retirement.

When I told Hisoka that I liked my bearably hot pool, he turned around and walked toward it. Apparently, the rule about covering yourself with towels only applies to the front. I watched his naked butt as he stepped into the hot water. Resting his washcloth on his head, he sat down and faced me.

I don't have a lot of rules about dating, but one of them has to be that my date can never see me naked on the first date. I don't know if that should happen on the 52nd date or the 104th, but definitely not the first. Any naturist can tell you that nudity has nothing to do with sex, but in my experience, getting naked on a date almost always has something to do with sex.

Maybe there was something in the air that night. Maybe it was my spontaneous trip to Japan. Maybe it was Hisoka's firm butt. Maybe it was the fact that we were surrounded by older people, none of whom would have looked too kindly on any youthful shenanigans. Whatever it was, I dropped my towel in front of my date, and several older people who may or may not have even known I was there, most of whom could probably not even see me through all the steam.

Hisoka smiled and watched me step into the pool. He might have watched a little too long. At least I was polite enough to look away when he got in, as far as he knows. As soon as I was in the water, I sat on a smooth rock and he asked me about my day on Miyajima. We talked about the island as though we were not naked and surrounded by other naked people. With mostly shoulders and heads poking out of the water, it was hard to notice fashion choices.