I'll tell you about the scariest thing to happen to be since coming to Japan. I'm a big fan of public baths and hot springs, and I learned early on that you can travel around Japan cheaply by staying at "saunas," which are 24-hour public baths that also offer traditional saunas as well as a communal room for customers to sleep in. They're cheap, costing around $30 to stay in the heart of a large city, and it can be fun to strike up conversations with the other patrons, who are often so surprised to see a
gaijin in a place like that that they'll buy you a beer. All public baths, hot springs and saunas post signs that forbid customers with tattoos from entering, which is intended to keep
yakuza (Japanese mafia) out of family-friendly establishments. The first time I went to Kyoto, I thought it'd be fun to stay in a sauna, but I hadn't realized at the time that Kyoto is a hotbed of these
yakuza types, and the sauna I'd decided to stay at was filled to the brim with scary-looking gangsters with full-body tattoos and various scars all over their bodies. I tried to make the best of the situation, pretending not to notice the scary looks I was getting while I took in my surroundings. It was easy to pick out which man was the
oyabun (yakuza boss), since he was the one getting his back washed vigorously by his underlings (
kobun), who fell over themselves to do anything he wanted. Incidentally, if you have a tattoo you can still come to Japan: the signs aren't directed at you, and non-
yakuza Japanese with tattoos just ignore the rule, too.
