Mr. Igarashi’s family has lived in this town since its founding more than 100 years ago. They homesteaded a hilly, forested region deep within a dead end valley, far from any store or convenience. They harvested the trees, tilled the land, grew potatoes, ate potatoes, and feasted on squirrel and partridge. The house was crude, with gaps in the floor boards and the wall where daylight and snow could stream right through. In the winter, when the temperature plummeted below minus 30 degrees Celsius, their thick futon comforters, tucked in around their heads and faces, would turn white with frost as the moisture from their breath would freeze the fabric stiff.

It was a hard life. And the children did not have much save the clothes on their back. There was no TV or video games. As their after-school snack and entertainment, they looked forward to sitting around the wood stove and cooking a block of compressed potato starch, which they tossed directly in the fire until the outer surface was a black crisp. The block was then taken out and scrubbed ferociously against a few pages of old newspaper to remove the soot. Then the crispy, caramelized surface was peeled off like a skin and eaten with delight. After which the block was thrown back into the fire to repeat the whole process over again until, by hungry mouths or by hungry flames, it had been completely consumed.

Aside from this amusement, Mr. Igarashi was expected to work. And one of his daily chores as a boy was going to a nearby creek and collecting water for drinking, cooking, and of course for bathing. In a country famous for hot springs, it has really only been with the advent of modern drilling technology that they have become ubiquitous. And indeed, when Mr. Igarashi was a child, the only way to get clean was to make numerous trips to the creek, haul back heavy loads of cold mountain runoff, dump it into a giant metal drum, and heat it with a fire. It is called a goemonburo, buro meaning bath, and Goemon being the poor sap who was boiled alive in such a device in the summer of 1594 as punishment for a failed assassination attempt on politician and general, Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

But let us return, if you will, to our friend Mr. Igarashi, and from his age of hardship, jump ahead 50 years to the present day. Now, instead of a drafty shanty, Mr. Igarashi has a large two story, modern, insulated, multi-bedroom home with purple siding, replete with a full-size kitchen, a big screen TV, and a giant bathroom. In just half a century, along with the rest of modern capitalist society, northern Hokkaido has succumbed to consumerism. And for Mr. and Mrs. Igarashi this is no exception.

Yet, for Mr. Igarashi it seems to go a little further than this. Apparently, growing up without anything has seemingly made the joy of obtaining everything somewhat of an obsession for him. However, he doesn’t go after new items. He goes after what others throw away. That’s right: What is junk to another man is treasure to Mr. Igarashi. And on his sprawling new homestead right along the highway in the main part of town, Mr. Igarashi has over the years gradually built up an entire empire of well organized scrap wood, paper, metal, batteries, glass, car parts, and per-fabricated buildings that he calls a recycle business.

How much money he brings in by collecting garbage like this I can’t exactly say. But he seems exceedingly happy with it all, spending his evenings in his pre-fabs, all jerry-rigged together into one giant sprawling labyrinthine man-fortress. And at one end of it all, right next to the highway, concealed in a tiny shack made from a random array of salvaged wooden planks, is Mr. Igarashi’s goemonburo.

Whether this represents the same steel drum of his childhood, or just another treasure of his ever expanding collection of junk, I’m not exactly sure. But what I do know is that although he has a big house with a giant, well lit, heated bathroom, with all the amenities that modern life can afford, he doesn’t use it. Instead, when he comes home from work, he heads out to his man-fortress, chops up some wood, and lights a fire to start heating his goemonburo, as is self-evident by the puffs of smoke that can be seen merrily spurting out of the chimney of the aforesaid shack at around 4:30 pm every day.

Perhaps it is nostalgia or the rustic masculinity of it all, or perhaps he is unhappy with his marriage and needs distance from his wife. Whatever the reason, he has recreated this one piece of happiness from his childhood and clings to it religiously. Yet his motives are not selfish. For every time I see him, he evangelizes the goodness of the goemonburo and insists my wife and I come over and enjoy a dip. Not sure what to make of these advances, which were often mysteriously accompanied by fresh seafood and vegetables, and with some trepidation about the idea of wandering around naked by a shack next to the highway, I made some inquiries with my friends. To my surprise, I discovered that nearly everyone I knew has had a dip in Mr. Igarashi’s bath, and most importantly, have lived to tell me about it. It seemed we had little recourse to continue avoiding Mr. Igarashi’s kind and repeated invitations. So one evening in June, with towels in hand and a plate of homemade cookies, we made the short walk down the street to Mr. Igarashi’s goemonburo.

We rang the doorbell at the front door of his purple house and his wife emerged, a tiny, cute, short-haired and bright-eyed lady who couldn’t have weighed more than 30 kilograms. She had an apron on and seemed to have been in the middle of preparing food.

“Hi there,” she greeted us, smiling. “He’s in the back, I think, getting the bath ready. Go on and head around back of the house. You should find him.”

It wasn’t the “Come on in,” we had been expecting. But it wasn’t exactly, “Go away,” either. We smiled and said thank you and headed around to the man-fortress in the back of the house. Sure enough, the chimney of the goemonburo shack was happily churning out puffs of smoke. A light was on in one of the pre-fabs and the door cracked open. I stuck in my head and called out Mr. Igarashi’s name.

“Mr. Igarashi! Are you in here?”

“Oh! Boasen! Welcome!” exclaimed a distant voice, followed by quick footsteps. Mr. Igarashi came through an adjacent door and over to the entryway of the pre-fab. “Come on in. I was just getting the bath ready. Come on — oh the Mrs.! Good afternoon!”

“Good afternoon,” my wife replied.

“Thank you so much for coming over,” he said as he bowed to her politely. Then in a lower voice he said to me, “Why don’t you guys have any children yet? Eh, Boasen? You sure the plumbing’s working properly down there?” then he gently patted my crotch.

I was really too stunned to reply. But he had already moved on to sweeping gestures of his man-den. “What do you think? Pretty swell, ain’t it? I got all this stuff — for free!”

The room was filled with every possible thing necessary for living. There was a sink, a china hutch, book shelves, a raised and carpeted sitting area with a table and gas burner already set out. There were cushions and blankets and even a folded up futon in the corner. There was a stereo, a TV, and an oscillating fan. The wall was adorned with a small pendulum coo-coo clock, numerous posters of women in one-piece swimsuits holding mugs of Asahi beer, and the obligatory deer head with an impressive 10 point rack. I was thinking to myself that it didn’t really seem possible for a place to hold more testosterone when he excitedly asked us to, “go ahead and put your stuff down. I want take you out and show you the bath.”

He led us out a door and through a dark garage and then outside once more. While my eyes adjusted to the bright light, a truck lumbered past on the highway nearby. It was then that I realized where we were standing. In front of us was the goemonburo, raised up on a wooden platform with a homemade kiln underneath, made from parts of an old wood-stove hand-welded to the iron drum of the bath.

“There she is!” Mr. Igarashi proclaimed with a wide gesture. “This is your first time to see a goemonburo, right Boasen?” Like a lot of people here, Mr. Igarashi never added the Japanese equivalent of “Mr.” to my name.

“Yes, yes,” I nodded enthusiastically. “It’s my first time. Please show me how it works.”

The body language of his reply revealed an embarrassed pride that was akin to him saying, “Well shucks. I thought you’d never ask.” He took me over to the kiln and opened the door so I could see the fire burning inside. “See, I heat the water using the stove here,” he said.

Then he stood up and pointed to a faucet head protruding up and over the bath drum. “And here is where I add water and adjust the temperature.” No more hauling water from the creek by hand, I thought.

Then he told me to take off my shoes and climb up onto the platform with him. At this moment, I thought I detected a slight whimper emanating from another garage adjacent to the bath. However, it was fleeting. So I ignored it and scrambled up the platform, unwittingly thrusting my head into an invisible cloud of a most repugnant and recognizable odor. I tried to take in everything, including the topless pin-up girl with gigantic breasts pouting down at the bath, but found my eyes starting to water from the stench. “Do you have a dog, Mr. Igarashi?”

“Oh, yeah. I do,” he said very matter of fact. “But he’s crazy. Wants to hump everything. Can’t hardly take him out ‘fore he starts humpin’ trees, sign posts, other people, dogs, cats, foxes. He’s a regular nuisance so I just keep him locked up in that garage there.” I’ll have my readers take note that this garage had no windows. And by the smell of things, this poor creature was literally wallowing in his own decaying excrement. I couldn’t help but think that if I was put in a similar situation, the moment I was released, I’d probably want to hump everything in sight too. Yet I had not but a moment to consider all this as Mr. Igarashi was eagerly explaining the workings of the bathing area.

“You see here, these large buckets,” there were about seven four gallon buckets, “these are filled with hot water. These are what you use for washing yourself ‘fore you get in the bath. And this trough up here you can add hot water to it and that will let you use the shower. And here’s body soap and shampoo. And you put your clothes here in this basket up here to keep them dry. And you hang your towel here,” he pointed to a wire clothes line strung across one corner of the platform. “And when you’re ready to get in the bath, make sure you put in this wooden platform to stand on so you don’t burn your feet on the bottom,” and he pointed to a homemade pallet of boards cut circular in shape so that they would fit into the drum.

“Think you got it?” he asked me.

“Got it,” I answered, trying not to breathe too deeply.

He turned to my wife. “What do you think Mrs.? Think he understood all that?”

“Yes, I think he did.” she bravely replied.

“Well that figures, Boasen. I knew you was a smartun,” he trumpeted with a laugh. “You’re going to take a bath first, aincha?” he asked. But before I could answer, he said, “hang on, I’ll go get you a cold beer.”

Left alone with my wife a few moments we commiserated together on the fragrance of the situation. But agreed that we had come this far, it would not be polite to turn back now. So like any noble gentleman I offered to enter the bath first such that I could get it over with as fast as possible.

There is something oddly paradoxical about getting naked and vulnerable and attempting to wash oneself while enveloped in such unique potpourri. For no matter how hard I scrubbed, or how much soap I used, everything still smelled like, well, dog shit. At last I gave up the notion of ever getting clean and decided at the very least instead, to focus on getting warm. For evening was drawing near and, although it was June, it gets chilly in northern Hokkaido.

So there I sat, crammed up in Mr. Igarashi’s goemonburo, cold beer in hand and knees pulled up under my chin, and the smell of dog crap wafting about. A few moths zoomed about a light hanging from its power cord from a wire attached to the roof above me. On a shelf above the shower, some ancient radio was crackling out unintelligible enka songs. And beyond the confines of the bath’s white and weathered walls,  the cacophony of summer bugs went on uninterrupted aside from the occasional roar of a passing car on the highway three or four meters away.

I raised my glass to the little lass pinned on the wall and asked her how she managed to maintain such an erotic attitude in such thick and choking air. She didn’t answer. Maybe she was holding her breath. I know I was.

Back in the man-den, where the air was notably more pleasant, Mrs. Igarashi was busy cooking up quite the feast for us. Soon the sake was flowing like that creek from Mr. Igarashi’s childhood and all kinds of interesting conversation ensued. Of which, I think I had my virility questioned and crotch patted at least two more times throughout the evening. But we ate ravenously and laughed heartily, and in general had quite the merry time. Eventually, however, Mr. Igarashi got too drunk, passed out, and began to snore with most horrific violence, a sure sign that it was time to call it a night.

“Will he be alright?” my wife and I asked.

“Yeah,” said Mrs. Igarashi laughing. “He’s always like this. I just leave him here until morning.”

We couldn’t help laughing in return. We thanked her for the wonderful evening and the delicious meal, and admitted quite truthfully that, “We really had a good time.”

“Well, thank you. We did too. Please feel free to come on by anytime you’d like to take a bath. I know he’d love it,” she said gesturing to the unconscious rumbling heap on the floor.

We all laughed again. “Thank you so much,” I said. And then, in one final act of curiosity asked, “By the way, Mrs. Igarashi, do you ever take a bath in the goemonburo?”

“Heaven’s no,” she said. “That’s his special place. I would never intrude.”

And that, my friends, explains everything.