Oasis, what horrors!

20Sep07

I am a member of Oasis.

What’s Oasis? An exclusive nightclub in the center of Ginza? An arabian-themed massage-parlour in a back alley of Roppongi? No, actually it’s a “Sports Club” as they say in Japan or as we say in English, a private gym. It’s a place where I can swim laps in a 25m-long pool, practice my golf swing, lift weights and attend a surprising variety of fitness programs. It’s keeping me fit for now. There’s things that I like about it, including the amazing Japanese body-composition-analyzing machine that gives you a full-body evaluation, the fact that they have “Hawaiian Power Pilates” classes 2x/week, and their dedicated, understanding service staff. But there’s one room in the gym that I have issues with: the locker room.

The locker room is comfortably furnished. It’s got plenty of lockers, vanity mirrors, coin-operated massage chairs, a vending machine, a sauna, and a big Japanese shower room. It’s got a swimsuit dehydrator, a fan, and a blow-dryer at every sink. It’s got free cotton swabs for your ears, shaving lotion, hair tonic, body wash, and 2-in-1 shampoo. It’s got it all. I guess that’s why so many people go in there.

That’s right. Many people are in there. Mostly Japanese men. From my informal survey, mostly old men. Sometimes the cleaning lady comes in, too, while there are old Japanese men, doing what people do in the locker room; change clothes, dehydrate their swimsuits, take a bath, spend a few minutes in the sauna, and generally relax after their workout. But the big kicker for me about this locker room is that all the old Japanese men, and me, the foreigner, do all this stuff completely naked. Sometimes the naked men do things a little differently than we do in America. For example, I saw a man yesterday who had just left the shower. He decided to dry all of the hair on his body. With a Hairdryer. In front of the Vanity Mirror. Completely Naked. With special attention to his Penis.

Let me describe the scene to you better. This prune of a skinny man, with slightly saggy skin, a balding patch, and slightly bloodshot eyes was standing there, hairdryer in his right hand, his left hand gently brushing his pubic hair, with his hips bent slightly towards the mirror so that his balls could get some of the warm breeze. Imagine that. I can’t even begin to understand what was going through his mind when he was doing this. Maybe he was thinking about the warm air going over his lil pickle. Maybe he was thinking that he should get his pubes as dry as possible to prevent crotch-rot. Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all, just acting the way that any uninhibited, 50-year-old healthy Japanese man would act after taking a bath and realizing that he needed to dry his bush in front of the mirror for EVERYBODY to see as they left the showers.

I understand needing to dry yourself. I don’t understand why anybody needs to dry their junk with a hairdryer in front of the mirror in a public setting. I, as a red-blooded American, don’t want to let my pubes fly through the air. I also don’t want to see that much of any man ever again.

Yes, it shocked me. I can’t just chalk it up to “that’s Japan”. Needless to say I got dressed and ran out as soon as I could. Then my wife and I swapped stories about the gross-outs she’d seen in the women’s locker room, because we often go together. I just had to get it out.

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