5 faux pas at public baths: no. 3 knickers

The dreaded time has arrived. You’ve managed to enter the right changing room, you’ve found your locker (the one for your shoes and the one for your clothes), you’ve been to the loo and remembered to take the toilet slippers off. You can’t put it off any longer. It’s time to get your kit off and become naked  – there, I said it – in front of strangers.

Communal nudity is not a thing in Britain – not in my experience anyway! So when I was at secondary school, P.E class for girls was a problem because exercise = sweat = shower. And NONE of the girls wanted to take a shower because shower = nudity = humiliation. 😭

The solution to this was to avoid sweat at all costs – just stand there when the tennis ball goes flying past you. Then walk slowly to pick it up. But after class, despite our lacklustre performances, we knew we’d still be told to take showers. This issue was fixed with the jumbo-sized towel brought from home.

The towel was not used to dry yourself, since nobody had any intention of going in the shower. It was used as a mini changing cubicle. You wrapped it around yourself, walked to the shower, stuck your feet under the water to get wet footprints on the floor as you scuttled back to your place. Here you changed back into school uniform underneath the towel. If another female saw anything untoward, like a nipple or – and we’re getting serious now – pube (if you had any) – well, you’d never hear the end of it.

That sounds so ridiculous now.

Especially when you walk into a changing room here and see all generations mixing together from toddlers to great-grandmothers casually stripping off and wandering around in their birthday suits like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

So, when in Rome…

undress with confidence and walk tall and proud to the shower area. I don’t want to see any sheepish scampering towards the baths. The towels provided won’t be big enough to wrap all the way around yourself – not in my case anyway – so don’t event attempt that.

Take the shampoo and body wash with you that you brought from home and one of the small towels that you were given at reception (we’ll talk more about towels next time). Some facilities provide everything you need including toothbrushes and even scrubbing cloths. But other places don’t. So it’s probably best to bring your own.

As you walk towards the baths, don’t worry about the 3-year-old standing frozen in surprise staring at you. Some of the older ladies (or men) might want to take a good look as well. But most fellow bathers won’t take much notice of you even if you are the only foreigner in the bath.

The rules for what to wear in the baths are very simple: Don’t wear anything. 

However, under some circumstances and if the facility has communal areas – restaurants, communal saunas, karaoke rooms, etc, – then you will be provided clothing to wear there. This is where we come to faux pas number 3.

NUMBER 3

DON’T put knickers on your head

Clothing in communal areas usually involves some kind of T-shirt and shorts combo – often blue for boys and pink for girls! (They tend to have several sizes and the receptionist will use their discretion to choose the size for you…)

If there is an actual swimming pool at the facility then you’ll need to bring a swimming costume.

Once at a bath in Japan us ladies were given floral knee-length dresses to wear! I can’t remember the last time I wore a dress. And strolling around with fellow ladies all dressed the same in our feminine florals it felt like a scene from The Stepford Wives.

Why do some ladies wear black underwear in the bathing areas?

In the segregated bathing areas in Korea, you might spot a couple of ladies in black underwear or black swimming costumes. They are not body-shy bathers, they are the sesinsa 세신사. (se  ‘wash’ sin ‘body’ sa ‘specialist’) the professionals who will scrub all the dead skin off your body! (I hear that the male staff in the men’s baths wear black trunks)

They have skin scrubbing (akasuri) in Japan too. I know ‘someone’ (again, this was absolutely NOT me…) who went for a skin scrub in the public baths in Japan. She went into the special section of the bathing area where there are tables for you to lie on (naked) while the scrubbing specialist uses a rough cloth over your entire body to get all the dead skin off.

Beforehand, the ‘customer in question’ was given a plastic shower cap to wear during the procedure. Assuming this was to protect her hair, she put the shower cap on her head.

But as she was about to lie down on the table, naked except for her shower cap, she was told – in the politest possible way – that this was NOT a shower cap for her head but rather a pair of plastic knickers to ‘cover her modesty’ while she was lying on the table. OH.

😳

In Korea, as far as I know, you won’t be given plastic knickers. So on the plus side, there’s no need to worry about making that faux pas here. And no point worrying about your modesty either…

So to recap, follow these three simple rules and you can’t go wrong

don’t wear anything in the segregated baths
wear something in communal areas  (shorts & t-shirt, a swimming costume, etc)
scrutinise any garments you are given (avoid putting knickers on your head)

read about other faux pas at the baths :

faux pas at public baths: no. 1 女 or 男?

5 faux pas at public baths: (no. 2) FEET

5 faux pas at the public baths: no. 4 sweat

5 Faux Pas in public baths: no. 5 towels

Here’s a general overview with some useful language you might need at the public baths in Korea.