Armchair Traveller
Lost in translation
Tokyo, I am not the first foreign visitor to observe, is a city ob-sessed by cleanliness. The streets are clean, the cars are clean, the buildings are clean and the people, despite being famously dirty-minded, like to keep themselves clean too. Trouble was, after 12 hours on a plane from London, a night out in Roppongi and a morning spent pouring money into a cacophonous slot machine in a smoky Shibuya pachinko parlour, I felt filthy.
I asked the concierge at the Century Hyatt (like the nearby Park Hyatt, of Lost in Translation celebrity, only cheaper and not as good) if she knew of an onsen nearby, so I might sluice my grimy body and purify my jetlagged mind.
I’d heard about onsen from my brother Christopher, an experienced Japan hand. ‘If you’re brave enough,’ he’d texted me before I left, ‘naked bathing in a natural hot spa can’t be missed.’ The concierge smiled sweetly and told me I probably wouldn’t like the nearest one on account of it’s being ‘very old’ and also ‘for locals’. It sounded ideal. She shrugged and gave me a map.
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