the pool
I got a gym membership at a 24-hour gym a 10-minute walk from my apartment a few months ago. Honestly, I didn’t use it as much as I thought I would. The gym was very small and cramped, and though the machines were fairly modern, it just didn’t feel that comfortable to use. I think if I already came in with a lot of prior gym confidence it would’ve been sufficient, but alas…
I ended up cancelling that membership and started looking into a gym even closer to my place. I didn’t sign up for this one at first because the reviews weren’t as good, but in hindsight, I feel like newer places always run campaigns* in order to inflate their reviews. I even participated in one at my climbing gym - they were giving people 2 months of free membership in exchange for a review, which was an insane deal. Of course I wrote a positive one. The problem with regular gyms is they won’t let you try it out without signing up for a membership first, so my advice is: 1) don’t fall for any traps that lock you into a long-term plan, you will definitely end up paying more, 2) in hindsight, I should’ve reached out first and asked for a tour before signing up. Given the language barrier, I was too scared to do that at first, but it would’ve been worth it.
The new gym is quite a bit more expensive and isn’t open 24/7, but when I did go to the previous gym, I wasn’t really taking advantage of its 24/7-ness anyways, so I figured I’d try this place out. Reviews said facilities were old, but it had a pool, and I do love swimming. The reviews also mentioned a bath and sauna - I was highly skeptical of the quality though, so I didn’t get my hopes up. I gave myself a quick tour because it was pretty easy to waltz right in (it’s inside a big mall). I walked into the gym area and it was absolutely humongous, potentially even more spacious than US gyms I’ve seen. There was even an indoor track. It was very clear the demographics skewed old/retired, just a bunch of people doing very simple exercises or hanging out in a massage chair.
I decided to go for it. They gave me an intro lecture, of which I understood about 50%. It always starts out so good when the employee speaks simply and slowly with lots of visuals and gestures, and then they go into some legal/technical jargon and I just stare at them blankly, and then they stare at me blankly because they have no way of explaining it simply, and then I just have to awkwardly force a smile and nod just to move on from the conversation. And then they keep staring at me because they asked me a question where a shy nod is not an appropriate answer, and then I have to awkwardly go like, “ummm…sorry can you explain that again…?” or give a more confident yes or no just to get to the next NPC dialogue.
I walked into the locker room and saw a dozen signs saying not to drip water in the locker room. Okay, make sure to dry off before entering, I told myself. I went to the pool and told a staff member it was my first time because I was so worried about breaking additional rules. That was good thinking (despite being shy), because boy were there a lot of rules. First, you have to shower head-to-toe before entering (pretty normal rules). Second, watches and jewelry, including earrings are not allowed. That sucked, because I have a watch that I use to track my swimming, and I wear earrings so I’d have to take them off before entering the pool every time (which increases the chances of losing them). Next, each lane was labeled. Clearly, the far two lanes were being used for swim lessons. But all the other lanes open to gym members each had a rule associated with them. The lane closest to where we were was for swim walking. I have never seen that before, but sure enough, there were about 6 old people slowly walking up and down that lane in a line. The next lane was for swimming from left to right, and the lane after was for swimming right to left. I literally asked “what?” out loud. The signs next to the lanes seemed to agree with what I heard him say too, but my brain was just way too stupid to figure out what was going on in that moment. He explained it again slowly and simply, and it was what I understood the first time. I’m much more used to swimming laps in a single lane, and if you’re the same speed as someone else, you can just stay to the right and swim in counter-clockwise circles in the lane following each other, and if you aren’t the same speed, then you can just split the lane in half, so this single-direction, non-lap format was really confusing me. So once you swim down the length of the pool…where do you go? I wondered. I went to take off my watch and earrings, then rinsed thoroughly, then just stood at the side of the pool and observed. The staff must’ve thought I was an idiot, or maybe they appreciated that I was taking the time to understand the system. I watched as someone swam from the right side to the left side in lane 3…then they went under the lane divider into lane 2 and swam from left to right. So it was like a very large version of the counter-clockwise lap swimming that I’m used to. It’s harder to get contiguous laps in since your swim gets interrupted as you go under the divider, but I lost my ability to time my swims anyways without my watch, so it is what it is. Luckily, lane 4 is for regular lap swimming, but it’s often occupied by lessons.
After I got out of the pool, I took care to dry off as much as I could before entering the locker room. But I was still wearing a wet swimsuit, so even though my skin was dry, I was still definitely dripping. As I started changing out of my swimsuit, I realized I was squeezing out large puddles onto the ground. I gingerly mopped it up with a towel, when an obaasan (granny) turned around and started shouting, “脱がないで！！” (nuganaide, which means “don’t take it off!!”) at me. I turned around and saw a gym cleaning lady mopping up after me. I was super embarrassed but I didn’t know what to do, so I walked away from the lockers back towards the pool. I kept trying to make eye contact with the cleaning lady hoping for some more instructions, and eventually when she got close to me I said, “where do I go…?” and then she pointed to the changing room. And then it occurred to me that there is a direct path from the pool to the changing room lined with towels and raised flooring so you don’t have to get the locker room wet. After that moment, I started seeing signs everywhere that said “Please change in the changing room,” and “if you get the floor wet, please mop after yourself.” Life is hard.
The changing room was pretty nice, very spacious and has sinks for washing your clothes and those centrifuge machines that dry your swimsuit in a few seconds. It’s connected to the bath, which was actually as nice as any indoor onsen I’ve been to, with powerful jets and a perfectly great sauna. I was thoroughly impressed, and super excited because I love onsens but it’s just such a hassle to have to go seek one out (they usually aren’t that convenient), pay money, bring a change of clothes, etc. But being attached to the gym was just pure genius.
Turns out, I must really love swimming, because I pretty much gave up on the gym part of the gym and have been exclusively going swimming after class every day. I know I’m not much of a disciplined person, so I attributed not making it out to the gym every day previously purely as a matter of discipline. Turns out if I genuinely enjoy doing something, I’ll actually do it regularly. Go figures.
*Is it called campaign in the US too or did I finally adopt a Japanglish-ism?? There are a bunch of words in Japanese that come from English, but is not a phrase anyone would actually say in English…like limited-time offer sales are called campaigns (キャンペイン = kyanpein) in Japanese which sounds like an English word, but Americans would just call it a sale. But now I can’t remember what the term is for when a store will offer a deal in exchange for say, reviews…is it called a promotion? Dang. It feels like my brain is deteriorating.
Fun aside: I was looking through some of my earlier blog drafts and one of them is from January 7th titled “getting a gym membership” where I started to complain about how difficult it was to do simple things, and I never ended up finishing the post because it was actually just too damn long and difficult to explain. It’s actually good to look back and remember my struggles, which I magically no longer really experience (at least to that extent). There are three main components to the difficulty of “doing stuff” in Japan: 1. language barrier, 2. logistics barrier (not having the right prerequisites, like being registered as a resident, having a Japanese phone number, having the right app, etc.), and 3. it’s actually just annoying. Language barrier is pretty straightforward, and obviously that’s improving for me via classes. You might think “it’s actually just annoying” will never change, but you kind of start to know what to expect - when you sign up for a new anything, you know what common things it will ask and have that memorized. You understand what kind of brute-force methods you need to use when you encounter “Error: half-width alphanumeric or full-width kana only”. You know what garbage on the terrible UI websites to ignore and which ones are the important ones. You’ve memorized the kanji for the city you live in and all the cities you frequently travel to so you don’t have to translate the page and un-translate it in order to actually use the page. The biggest challenge when starting out in my opinion is actually the logistics barrier. As you live here longer, you will gradually acquire all the usual prerequisites, so the barrier to “doing stuff” lowers every time. But when you first start out, not only do you not speak the language and don’t know how to deal with the annoying bits, but you have to do the process so many more times just to accomplish your one task, which feels unbelievably disheartening. Spoiler alert, I didn’t end up signing up for a gym membership on January 7th because it was actually that damn annoying (and admittedly I was also kind of scared, because I’ve never signed up for a gym before and when I peeked in, everyone looked like an intimidating buff dude…).