おふろ！ごちそう！

I tried a Japanese public bath for the first time today. Actually, it was my first time in any kind of public bath, but it was one here in town. It was decent, but I can only wash myself so much before I'm clean. That said, it was not what I was expecting.
To start, you take off all your clothes, then go sit on a stool that's about as tall as your ankles. You then wash yourself completely, with soap, from head to toe. It is critical that you get all the soap off of you. If you don't, the pools become sudsy pretty quick and people get upset. Or so I have been told.
This is standard public bathing stuff in Japan, but the details of the next part may vary.
Anyway, you then proceed to either of five different baths, of varying temperatures, in whatever order you feel like. There was one that was at about 55 degrees F (as far as I can guess, anyway) and I felt dizzy sitting in that after only a few minutes. There were a couple of lukewarm baths, a hot bath with a special thing*, and one I didn't try. There was also a sauna.

In case you don't do American English, or at least, Will English, a sauna is a room you go into that has a heater in one corner and is very, very hot. I don't know how hot, but it's hot enough that if I didn't blink a lot, I would burn my eyelids with how hot the water layer on my eyes became. Usually, a sauna has a thing of water that you can dump on some hot rocks that are on or in the heater, and that allows you to control the humidity of the whole thing, but this one was all electronic, which takes all the fun out of it.

The hottest tub was slightly warmer than your average hotel hot tub, but a hell of a lot cleaner. The lukewarm tubs were actually pretty toasty; well into the 90s I'd guess. As you still couldn't sit in them for too long.
By the way, the Japanese think Western bath tubs are weak, in general.

*The "special thing" was two conductive plates mounted in the water about three feet apart with a sitting area in between. I have no idea what they were for, but I saw a guy sitting there for quite a while. Hamid tricked me into putting my hand between them because I thought they were little jets. It was... shocking.

---

So afterward, we went to a ramen shop that Hamid said was pretty grungy. I don't really understand why he wanted to go back if he didn't like it, but we went there anyway. We went upstairs and he ordered fried rice and I ordered gyouza, having eaten some rice just prior to the ofuro (bath... kind of). I finished off my gyouza, feeling fairly full, and waited for Hamid to finish his fried rice.
About the time he was halfway done, I asked a person nearby what one of the things he was eating was called. He named it - though I can't remember now, it had shrimp and an in it - and proceeded to hand the plate over to me and refused to take it back despite Hamid's best attempts. I refused, but I wanted to try it, so I didn't refuse quite as strongly.

He then ordered Hamid a big (about a liter!) beer, and ordered two more orders of gyouza and some fried chicken. I was already pretty full, but managed to finish one of the orders of gyouza and the entire order or fried chicken. I gave up on the second order, though and had to give it back to the man. All in all, it was about $20 worth of food and drink on his tab. Never got his name, either.

I am so full right now.

I don't know how people can lose weight here...