New Year is a significant date in the Japanese calendar. Homes are “spring” cleaned and decorated, extravagant meals are prepared and respects are paid at temples. It felt right to spend the major holiday in the capital. I’d been putting off making the pilgrimage to Tokyo all visitors to Japan must complete, I was expecting another faceless city full of skyscrapers and salarymen. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity of neighbourhoods. Some were indeed crammed with shoals of people darting in and out of department stores, but others were blanketed by large inner-city parks and had a more peaceful atmosphere with their traditional temples intact. My favourite moments of the Tokyo trip were these more tranquil times, although counting down to midnight in the middle of Shibuya after too many plum wines was pretty great too.
In a few busy days, I managed to cram in the most popular sights, two art exhibitions, the Emperor’s final New Year’s speech and an onsen visit. On my final morning in Tokyo, I planned to nip to the imperial palace to catch sight of the ageing Emperor, due to abdicate later this year. I politely joined what I assumed to be a stereotypically efficient, fast-moving queue. This was, in retrospect, a mistake. The tail end looked manageable but what I couldn’t see was that the entire palace grounds were choked full of well-wishers eager to wave their Japanese flag at Emperor Akihito. Once you had entered this queue of doom, there was no way of escaping. I’d like to say he was worth the six-hour wait, but in fact, the crowd was much more interesting. Orderly and quiet, I stood shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of Japanese grannies attempting to film the speech on their flip phones [to little avail, these women were munchkins]. It seemed that their main takeaway from the experience was first-hand gossip about how old the monarch looked.
Tokyo gave me the greatest New Year gift of all, an appreciation of onsens. I took my first public bath in Asakusa for 500 yen (£3.50) and it was a revelation! A crucial aspect of Japanese purifying rituals, an onsen is a hot spring bath usually enjoyed completely naked with other strangers. Especially for a Western woman, the idea was beyond intimidating. We’re raised to view our bodies as projects to perfect for the eyes of others, for the appreciation of men and the envy of other women. Our prudishness towards non-sexualised nudity only strengthens the barriers to accepting every unique body type. The only naked bodies we see are the culturally acceptable ones. So stepping into a bath full of women of every age and size was even more healing than the water’s magical mineral properties. Older ladies chatted whilst helping one another to scrub their backs and small children dipped their toes in to test the bath temperature. The only outright acknowledgement I got for looking different (non-Japanese) was from a tiny boy bathing with his Mum, who momentarily broke the zen-like peace by waving to me and saying ‘HI!!!’. The other ladies giggled and smiled warmly at me. An onsen is a place of total respect for the body, you come to relax and purify it with your friends and family. I couldn’t help but think that young kids, including boys, being accepting of their own and others’ bodies is a beautifully healthy relationship that the West is sorely missing out on. In complete comfort, I found myself looking at my own body with a child’s nonjudgemental eyes.
The Carnivorous Woman 