Yokohama

“What an… interesting custom,” said Fiona, submerged chin-deep in deliciously warm water. “Sadly, I can’t see it ever taking off in England.”

“But how on earth do you get clean?” said Kimiko, sitting beside her. The Japanese woman, a translator by profession, wandering the streets of the bustling port of Yokohama in search of somebody to practice her English with, had happened by chance to stumble across Fiona. They’d shared a pleasant lunch of soba noodles, accompanied by freely-flowing sake, before Kimiko had insisted that Fiona join her in another classic Japanese experience.

“We bathe in private.”

“Why?”

“So nobody will see us naked.”

“But we’re all women here,” Kimiko pointed out. The traditional Japanese bathhouse, located in an understated wooden building on a street of shops and restaurants a short distance from the harbour, was, indeed, full of women, though Fiona happened to be the only Westerner present. By a strange coincidence, they were all between the ages of eighteen and forty. “Don’t women in your country ever bathe in the company of other women? How modest you must all be!”

“Well, of course we do it sometimes. Group showers at boarding school, and so forth. But not every single day.”

“Well, I think it’s harmless,” said Kimiko, shrugging in a way that made her nipples peep above the surface of the water. Of course, the dozens of lovely young Japanese girls in the bathhouse were all completely nude. Some sat on stools, washing themselves off or scrubbing each other’s backs. Others lounged in the bath, idly chatting to their friends. Their dark, silky hair was tied up in elaborate buns and topknots, the intricate formality of the complex hairstyles accentuating the simplicity of their nudity. “By the way, what big tits you have!”

“How dare you!”

“I meant no offence. In Japan we call this hadaka no tsukiai. Naked friendship. The bathhouse is a place where people can put aside the formalities and truly get to know each other.”

“Some formalities exist for a reason,” said Fiona, going bright red as Kimiko casually fondled her creamy, pink-nippled breasts, the slippery twin hemispheres bobbing on the surface of the water as the Japanese girl’s soft, delicate hands teased and toyed with them. “Would you mind not doing that?”

“But Western women have such interesting bodies. So different from us Japanese. Yumiko, you have to try this!”

“No! Let go!”

“Of course, this isn’t at all sexual,” explained Kimiko, as Fiona was rapidly surrounded by giggling Japanese girls, all intent on groping, squeezing, sizing up and variously experimenting with her naked body. Slim Oriental hands, their touch light and delicate as butterflies, tweaked her nipples and tickled her belly and caressed her hips and pinched her inner thighs. A few especially bold girls even went so far as to glide their hands over Fiona’s mound of Venus, and even slip a questing finger or two inside her pussy, making the Englishwoman yelp with sudden indignity. “It’s just how Japanese women get to know each other.”

“I know enough people already! Would you please stop that at once?”

“Of course, I am the only person here besides you who speaks English,” Kimiko explained.

“Then tell them to stop.”

“彼女はそれが好きだ!”

“What did you say? That made it worse!”

“Of course, we would never let a man in here,” said Kimiko, cuddling up to Fiona and whispering in the blushing Englishwoman’s ear as she dipped a hand between her legs and began to stroke. “In Japan, we have some very strange and unique cultural traditions.”

“Stranger than this?”

“Japanese men,” explained Kimiko, her hot breath caressing Fiona’s neck as her fingers alighted on Fiona’s clit, cautious as a dragonfly landing on the surface of a pond, “find the naked embarrassment of women to be highly erotic. They’d like nothing more than to get in here and watch us bathe. Maybe even play some practical jokes on us. And this town is full of sailors, and criminals, and destitute young fellows with nothing better to do all day but to sit around and scheme.”

“But we’re… ahh! Quite safe here, I take it? Mmm, I say…”

“Oh, yes. Quite safe,” Kimiko said, as a trapdoor in the ceiling opened, and a large number of slimy frogs, slippery eels and wriggling octopi plummeted into the women’s bath. The girls shrieked as loud as they could, climbed out of the bath as quickly as they could and fled for the exit, **** to get away from the squirming (though entirely harmless) creatures as fast as they could. Every last kimono had already been pilfered from the women’s changing rooms, as well as Fiona’s travelling dress.

The bathhouse door swung open, and several dozen beautiful Japanese women in elaborate formal hairdos, with no clothes on, came scampering out past the startled attendant into the muddy streets of Yokohama. A squad of handsome ruffians, in the patched cotton jackets and trousers of workmen, toting surprisingly inexpensive Western portable cameras, waited with big smiles on their faces to greet the astonished girls.

“Hadaka no josei!”

“Hadaka no hentai!”

“Hadaka! Hadaka! Hadaka!”

The bathhouse door had already been swung shut and locked from the inside by the time it occurred to Kimiko, and the rest of the squealing nude ladies, that they’d blundered directly into another one of the boys’ stupid pranks. They therefore had no escape from the pointing fingers, the clicking cameras and the laughing ordinary citizens of Yokohama, who’d happily paused in their day’s business of selling rice cakes and hauling crates of Western goods to appreciate a good practical joke.

“Hadaka!” went up the cry, as the mortified women fled in all directions, pale bare bottoms wiggling and tastefully small boobs bouncing, butterfly hands folded primly between their legs to conceal the silky dark triangles of their bushes. Fiona, as the only European among the naked girls, was particularly conspicuous. Loud, booming Japanese laughter and jokes which, though in Japanese, clearly pertained to her breasts, followed her down the street as she ducked into a nearby alleyway, and soon discovered that she was completely lost.

Where, oh, where was the British consulate? Left? No, right? An endless labyrinth of paper screens and lanterns confronted Fiona. She hesitated amongst Yokohama’s back alleys, eyes peeping at her from the windows of restaurant kitchens, giggles drifting from the back doors of what she very much hoped were not brothels. Surely, one of these buildings must be safe harbour for a naked girl?

There! What did that sign say? The Japanese was incomprehensible, of course, but there was a badly translated message in English underneath that said “Master Of Binding.” A judge, perhaps, who bound people before the law? Or a priest, who bound people together in holy matrimony! Either way, thought Fiona, trotting towards the building’s open rear doorway, I’ll definitely be safe in there.