A Little Piece Of Tokyo In Collingwood
The Age
Thursday August 5, 1999
``They first met in the bath"- Robert Drewe, The Drowner.
In Japan, it is an ancient tradition that people meet in the bath. They immerse themselves in Japan's natural hot springs; they take their towels and their buckets and head down to the local public bath house and scrub themselves ``from face to toe".
Now, there is a little piece of Tokyo in the back streets of Collingwood, wedged between warehouses and garages, where Ms Hiromi Masuoka has designed and opened her Japanese bath house, Ofuro Ya.
``In Japan, at first because not many had hot water systems and there is not much area in Japanese houses for a bath, there were public bath houses on the corners," Ms Masuoka said.
``It is a community thing, where the family would go each day, where they would exchange news and wash each other's backs."
She came to Melbourne from Tokyo in 1991. She thinks this Japanese bath house, in Cromwell Street, is the first in Australia.
``I close my eyes and I can smell the wood, and hear the music of the running water, because that's what it is to me," Ms Masuoka said. Ms Masuoka has designed the bath house in the authentic Japanese tradition: there is bamboo, there is Japanese beer, there is sake, and there is an enclave where customers can indulge in an authentic shiatsu massage.
There is also nudity, but Ms Musuoka insists that people shed their inhibitions with their clothes.
Ms Masuoka said that some of her customers were expatriates yearning for a home-style hot bath, but at least three quarters are Australians - many of them students - intrigued by Japanese culture and partial to being pampered.
© 1999 The Age