Recently at the local "sento" (public bath), as I was changing back into my clothes, an old woman said to me, "Oh, what nice underwear you have!" Usually, when people start talking about my underwear, I either ignore them or feign not understanding Japanese. But as she spoke in that fashion of an old person who lives alone, I lent a sympathetic ear. Perhaps she always started conversations in the sento this way. Besides, as a foreign woman, you get used to questions, as Japanese women are always spying on the beauty products of foreigners to find out what gives them their blue eyes and blonde hair.

"The way they tie on the sides in bows," she continued, pointing at my hips, "reminds me of Japanese 'fundoshi.' " Fundoshi (traditional Japanese men's underwear) is knotted underwear. No, not underwear in knots, but underwear made out of one long strip of cloth that is wrapped around the person as if they were a spool and is secured with an industrial-strength knot. How the old woman made the connection between my underwear and men's fundoshi is still unclear.

"Up there in Tokyo," she said, gesturing as if it were the North Pole, "the department stores are selling fundoshi in all kinds of new colors and patterns. Japanese people are rediscovering the fundoshi!" She seemed particularly excited about this, and it didn't take me long to understand that it wouldn't be an understatement to say an underground underwear revolution was coming on.