Ahh, Boston. The food, the shopping, the *cold*. This morning, none of that was on my mind, as I had a nice, slow beginning, celebrated with an aesthetically pleasing, extremely tasty spread of food. But the thing that was really of note was my bath. My friends have one of those beautiful tubs with iron-claw feet and a hand-held shower spray. It's an experience-trying to get yourself clean. The last visit I managed to spray every inch of the bathroom, including my set of clean clothes that I'd laid out for after the bath. I've improved significantly since then: my clothes, still laid out as before, were not a bit soggy. There's definitely technique involved in this style of bathing.
It really reminded my of my visits to the Gion community baths of Kyoto, Japan. Being naked in front of scores of other women (and a couple of kids) was a difficult thing to swallow. And being the only white girl for miles certainly helped to feed my self-consciousness. But the thing about those baths, and even more so this morning in a room by myself, the experience is really quite intimate. In both cases you sit down and scrub and spray and examine and clean and really *see* every nook and cranny of yourself (for better or worse.) The stand-up method really allows you to be distant from your body, as you often soap places without looking at certain parts of your body for weeks at a time. The Japanese style bath makes you really look at yourself and notice the areas that need cleaning or shaving or just *attention.*
I'm thinking that I need to open a spa steeped in this intimate bathing method. Would you go?