Yesterday I took a bath with a cherry blossom bath bomb.
It was a rainy day in Japan.
Photo: Sarah Menkedick
I work a mad Monday-Friday 7-7 schedule, between the commute and a lunch “hour” that inevitably turns into a photocopying extravaganza with bites of supermarket sushi thrown in. Don’t get me wrong—I’m enjoying the job, my colleagues are great, and I seem to constantly be throwing myself into situations in which I’m over-stimulated, over-caffinated, and operating on a massive adrenaline rush.
But that said, work only leaves me Saturday and Sunday to explore Japan, and those two days seem like a giant candy store of possibilities. Orchid garden? Comic book café? Train to the countryside?
Yesterday, the candy store was closed. It rained. Poured. A friend and I tried to go out exploring, but peering at driving rain through an umbrella with wet shoes and wetter pants didn’t turn out to be an illuminating experience. So I sat in my apartment virtually all afternoon, feeling guilty for being closed off in my little bubble on my one free day, while Japan went on being Japan outside.
And then I took a bath with a cherry blossom bath bomb. Sakura is the Japanese term for cherry blossoms. The water turned a satiny pink. I sunk into the deep bathtub, the sides going up past my chin, and thought about Japan, travel guilt, and details.
It’s obvious that the best way to get to know a place is to roam around, see things, talk to people, eat things, be out and about and, in a word—immersed. And it’s natural for travelers to feel a sort of guilt for not doing so, or for not doing enough or doing it in the right way.
Yet at the same time, so much of a place seeps into a traveler through osmosis, through the slightest details that jar one’s memory years down the line.
Photo: Sarah Menkedick
I thought about this in the bath. The shower in my Japanese apartment is softly lit and perfectly designed, closed off from the rest of the apartment by folding glass doors. The bathtub is deep, like traditional Japanese baths. The room fills up with steam as the bath is filling. That day, the steam mixed with the fragile scent of sakura petals.
Japan’s in my bathtub, I thought. Yes, I’d love to be able to walk around and roam into temples and yakitori bars, but Japan is here, too. In the details. In smells and bath bombs and the depth of the tub. In the view from my balcony and the smell that hits me when I open the door and step outside—the smell of trees, with industrial overtones and hints of Asian spices.
Photo: Sarah Menkedick
All of this is part of what attaches me to this place and teaches me about it. And it’s not so much about doing what I think I should be doing—chasing the shoulds and the pressure and the guilt—as it is about creating the mental space to see.
How do you do it, travelers? What are the details, unexpected or sought out, that have etched out places for you?
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10 Comments... join the discussion!
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I loved this piece, Sarah, mainly because it articulated the constant tug I feel to nest and to be out in the world, exploring, regardless of where I am. I felt this all the time when we lived in Mexico City… strangely guilty for not being outside, exploring more markets, more museums, more galleries, more street food. One day I had a similar realization as yours– staying inside and stuffing squash blossoms was just as ‘authentic’ and ‘cultural’ an experience as roaming around the streets aimlessly, drinking in ‘culture’ for the sake of feeling like I’d accomplished something. Thanks for this!
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@ Hal — Bravo for sticking it out! I had the prospect of a comfy (if teensy) little apartment to come back to so it was a lot harder to maintain walking-in-the-rain stamina. It is weird how rain changes everything, isn’t it? It really gets you into a different vibe.
@ Julie– yes! I’ve finally figured out that it’s possible to indulge both my I-want-to-stay-home-and-cook-all-day and my I-want-to-walk-for-7-hours-and-eat-bizarre-kebabs-on-the-side-of-the-street urges. Living abroad, particularly, puts you in a weird spot–you live there, so you don’t want to feel like you have to be out and about all day doing “cultural” or “traveler” types of things. At the same time, you feel guilty for staying in because damn, you should be figuring something out, right? But really, neither one is cut and dry, and there’s always something in either–nesting or exploring–that reveals an element of place.
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Sarah, I loved this post. It reminded me of lying in the tub, first week in Hokkaido, listening to drums from the festival down the road. Maybe I should have stayed at the festival and hammered the drums myself, but at that moment what I wanted most was to be alone, in the bath, listening to the drums and luxuriating in the fact that Japan was my new home.
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Very good, Sarah kohai – the bathing culture is Japan.
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You hit the nail on the head for me, Sarah! I’m doing the coporate 9-5 in Barcelona and i’ve been constantly struggling with travel guilt. Pulling myself away from a nocturnal exploration of a good time on a school night is tough. But osmosis kicks in eventually and you get feel the culture in different ways whether it through morning commuter trains or watercooler chats. Rainy days are tough no matter where you are.
Thanks adding travel guilt to my vocab!↵ -
@ Turner– I definitely need to learn more about bathing culture seeing as I’ve always been a bath fiend. I got here, saw the bathtub, and spent about five minutes straight saying, “ooooo….”
@ Doug – so true! Sometimes I feel like getting sucked into routines that don’t feel like what you should be doing teaches you more, or at least teaches you weirder cultural phenomena than you might otherwise discover.
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Damn bathtubs down here in Okinawa are around 2×3ft and a 6ft body doesn’t fit too well in them. Before I met my present wife I used the tub for degreasing engine parts !
One of the greatest photos I’ve ever seen taken in Japan was a black&white shot of a couple walking in the rain with a perfect reflection of them in the flooded street. Rainy season’s just around the corner; keep your eyes open !
Great post and some cool photos.↵ -
Oh, Mike, you’ll have to post a link to that photo if you’ve got it! I am so susceptible to rain nostalgia.
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The search is on; it may take me awhile !
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