I do it about three times a week, but I tell you I would double that frequency if I could. It is surely one of life's great pleasures, and it takes on average (for me) 45 to 50 minutes. Some people smoke afterward, but I just like to cool down and think about things -- you know, life, the human body, that sort of stuff.

You will certainly have guessed by now that I am talking about a visit to the sento (public bathhouse). I lived for two years in Kamata, a chiefly working-class district in southern Tokyo's Ota Ward. Kamata boasts around a dozen sento fed by natural hot springs. The one I went to most often has a rotenburo (open-air bath). What a luxury in the middle of such an immense city!

But times are a-changin' for sento. To begin with, the metropolitan government, which sets admission prices across the capital, has raised the entry fee from 400 yen to 420 yen for adults. (In Kanagawa Prefecture, where I now live, the price is, thankfully, still only 400 yen.) And now a row has broken out over what has always been an accepted feature of public bathing: the kazokuburo (family bath), a term that signifies "mixed bathing."