sentou?

how to visit the sento

Even foreigners who are interested in Japanese culture are more resistant to visiting ‘Sento’.

There seems to be two main reasons for this,

The first is “cultural differences”, the culture that uses public bathing in nakedness is extremely rare all over the world, it is natural that many foreigners feel embarrassed.

The second one is “the issue of etiquette”, some etiquette in the japanese public bath may be difficult for foreigners to understand.

In this article, focusing on the the second reason, the author who is a Japanese writes the “etiquette of a Japanese public bath”.

The main three rules of public bath

As mentioned above, there are some rules in Japanese public baths, all of which aim mainly to keep cleanliness.
Japanese people have national character who prefer to be clean, and in public baths used by various people, we keep cleanliness by observing the following three rules.

1.Wash your body before taking the bathtub

In Japanese public baths, the dressing room and the bathroom are separated, and when you take off your clothes in the change room, you move to the bathroom, it is etiquette breach to get into the bathtub suddenly.
Be sure to wash yourself in the washing areas before putting on your bathtub. This keeps the hot water of the bath clean.

2.Do not put a towel

In Japanese public baths it is possible to hide the body or carry small towels for the purpose of washing the body.
After washing your body, putting a towel into a bath of hot water when entering a bathtub is a violation of etiquette.
Let’s put the towel on the head or place it somewhere not in contact with hot water, so keep the hot water of the bath clean.

3.Let’s wipe the body before returning to the change room

In Japanese public baths the dressing room and bathrooms are separated by doors.

When returning to the dressing room after finishing bathing, it is etiquette violation to move as it is without wiping the body.

Let’s wipe the body as much as possible so that water droplets do not fall on the floor of the dressing room, this prevents socks from getting wet after change clothes.