Roppongi Hills Spa

My mailing address says Tokyo, Japan, but I actually live ensconced in an expatriate bubble, and my day-to-day existence rarely provides any cultural insights on Japan. However exercising at various "spas" or "health clubs" in Japan, Asia, Europe and the US over the past year, I could hardly help but ponder the extraordinary contrast in how the local people behave at the different facilities.

Much of my training these days is at the Roppongi Hills Spa, the one luxury in my otherwise ascetic existence. I spent some two hours at the Roppongi Hills Spa yesterday and during the hour I was in the swimming pool I did not see a single other swimmer. After the swim I spent 45 minutes in the exercise room which I shared with only two other members. But then I head to the showers and suddenly it is wall to wall people. In the 15 minutes I spent hustling through my shower, I counted nine other guys. Guys gingerly cutting nose hairs, guys applying face lotions, guys lovingly blow drying their hair, guys languidly washing themselves before their bath, guys soaking in the bath, guys languidly washing themselves after their bath, guys toweling, guys sleeping... This practice of bathing is apparently a highly refined art in Japan, an art whose relaxed pleasure continues to elude me.

Contrast this with the "spa" I went to in California recently. Actually in America we would not call this kindof facility a spa. Americans go to "athletic clubs" or "health clubs". The Redwood City Athletic Club possesses all the same facilities -- pool, exercise, sauna, restaurant as the Roppongi Hills Spa. But us Americans (at least the males) hastily change our clothes and spend our time rigourously swimming, lifting weights, playing basketball, spinning. It is a grim, goal-oriented, time-harried crowd. Showering is a perfunctory thing. The shower facilities are rather spartan and do not always smell particularly nice, but even if they were as luxurious as Japan's, people are in too much of a hurry to care. Too much of a hurry to chat much either. More than half the people are wearing i-pods at the Redwood City Club anyway.

Now contrast this with the spa I went to on a business trip to Germany. As usual I was preoccupied with completing my swim and bike workout programs. But all around me the people were wading and floating in waist-high water, holding drinks and socializing with one another. I felt like I was at a huge poolside cocktail party. Nobody else was wearing goggles or doing laps.

Now that the ironman is over and my training requirements are less time-intensive pehaps I can relax a bit more at the spa? I doubt it, I am too American I guess in this respect.