This was published 7 years ago
Japanese onsen in Australia: Why we need to stop copying overseas experiences
Getting naked with strangers is different in Japan.Credit: Alamy
The initial signs are good. The foyer is recognisably Japanese, with its little shelf for storing shoes, its water feature burbling away in the corner, its clean lines and minimal design and the polite, friendly greeting from the Japanese staff behind the counter.
So far this could be Japan, except for the colourful Australian dollars I have to hand over to pay for the experience. Everything else seems right. That is, until I make my way into the bathhouse and begin stripping down.
I mean, it still looks the way it should. It looks like many of the traditional bathhouses and onsens I've been to before in Japan. It feels like I should be able to recreate those experiences here, to enjoy a small sliver of Japanese holiday in the Melbourne suburbs.
The Japanese experience: A tradtional onsen hot spring resort in Japan.Credit: Getty Images
The changing room is pretty much identical to the one in the traditional inn I visited in Kyoto. The ritual is the same, too. I take off all of my clothes and stuff them into a little box, which fits neatly into a shelf on the wall. I grab a yukata, or traditional robe, and wrap it around myself before making my way into the bathing room.
And even here, it looks the same. The little plastic stools are there, the ones you sit on while you give yourself a soaping and a scrub – same as the place I visited in Tokyo a few years ago. The hot bath looks similar, too, with its tiled sides and steaming, mineral-rich water. And the sauna looks right as well.
This should be the adventure I had been seeking out. I'd arrived here hoping to have a travel experience at home, to have a brush with another culture without having to leave our shores. I'd hoped to recreate the Japanese bathhouse experience, even on this warm Melbourne day.
And yet, I'm now questioning whether that was really a good idea.
Everything about this bathhouse looks right, but it doesn't feel right. It's lost some of the magic, some of the adventure, some of the exoticism.
It turns out that when you take away actual Japan from the onsen experience, when you remove that feeling of travelling and discovering an amazing country, what you're left with is a hot tub full of naked, hairy strangers. What felt interesting and exotic over there in Japan feels uncomfortable and even slightly creepy over here in Australia.
I don't hang around for long. I give the sauna a try, but it's so small that if it's more than just me in there I'm sitting knee to knee with one of those naked strangers, staring awkwardly at the wall. I step into the bath, and it's nice, but I can't help thinking that the sun has finally appeared outside after days of drizzly rain, and I should really be sitting in Fitzroy Gardens luxuriating in UV rays rather than sweating it up in a hot tub.
Maybe some experiences really are better left in their country of origin. Maybe we shouldn't try to recreate at home every thrill we've had overseas. Maybe some things are better off untainted by reproduction; better left cocooned in the glow of memory. Just because you can do something back in Australia, doesn't mean you should.
That's what I've discovered, and it's something worth bearing in mind this Australia Day, as we inevitably examine what it is that makes our country great.
I love the fact that Australia is so multicultural, that you can go out to places like Footscray, or Lakemba, or Sunnybank, or one of the hundreds of other pockets of foreign culture nestled within our cities, and experience a different world. That's wonderful.
But trying to recreate a particular foreign experience – that's not ideal. Instead, we should concentrate on enjoying the experiences that make Australia unique, on the things we do so well.
It might feel weird going to a Japanese bathhouse here, but it certainly doesn't feel weird having brunch with your friends at a great local cafe. It doesn't feel weird having a barbecue down by the beach and pulling out the cricket set to tonk a few tennis balls into the ocean. It doesn't feel weird going for a bushwalk, or camping out in a national park, or just listening to the Hottest 100 and wondering why you don't know any of the songs anymore.
Foreign tourists pay a lot of money for those experiences. Maybe they even try to recreate them at home. But they probably shouldn't, because sometimes it's better to just enjoy and appreciate what you have.
And book another trip to Japan.
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