Japan Trip Information

• How to use Chopsticks

If a foreigner can use chopsticks properly, he or she will get surprised and admired in Japan. Recently not a few adult Japanese can't use chopsticks properly, at which older genelations may frown but will never give advice because it is the matter of family education. The next figures show the proper way to use chopsticks. Practice!

• How to take a Japanese bath

You might be embarrassed to take a Japanese bath at first no matter whethere it is a family or public bath. But you might be able to get through the awkwardness easily if you know the basic routine in advance. Even though this is the guidance for a public bath, the basic concept is same for a family bath.

[In general]

• Confirm whether it is for male or female at the entrance each time, since publick baths are usually gender segregated locationally and sometimes periodically.
• Keep the bath water clean by separating it from the washing water and be courteous to other bathers.
• Sometimes tattooed people are not allowed in communal baths because it is associated with the Yakuza mafia in Japan. (A small area can be covered with a masking tape.)
• Menstruating women might as well refrain from using communal baths.

[Bathing procedure]

1. Take off your clothes in the change room and leave them in a basket or locker.
2. Enter a bathing room only with a face towel.
3. Before soaking in a bath, rinse and wash away your sweat and dirts briefly from your body with scooped water, tap water or a shower in the washing area.
4. Soak in a bath, relax and warm up your body. Keep your towel away from the bath water, settig it on your head or the side of the bath.
5. Step out of the bath, sit on a stool in the washing area and wash your body and hair with soap and shampoo.
6. Rinse away all foam from your body with tap water or a shower.
7. Tidy up your washing space; rinse your stool and washbowl and return them to where you got it from or simply set your washbowl upside down on the stool.
8. Soak in a bath again, relax and warm up your body, keeping your towel away from the bath water.
9. Step out of the bath. Take a final shower if you like before steppig out of bathing room.
10. Wipe up, dry off your body and put on your clothes in the change room.

        For more info. --> How to Take a Japanese Bath

• How to use a Japanese toilet

Japanese people did not used to wash their anus in a toilet but just wiped off with toilet paper instead until TOTO put Washulet on sale in 1980. Since then, the multi functional toilet has kept on evolving in Japan, equipped with a warm seat, a automatic lid, an imitative sound generator, a deodorizer, etc. As if it is going to be a care robot or a luxurious relaxation space. But if you are ineterested in the traditional Japanese culture, why don't you try the traditional squat style.