opinios

But it was the real deal. Wall to wall of beautiful grey marble, two indoor baths and another smaller one on the balcony. And I had the whole place to myself.

As per the routine, I sat on my little plastic seat to scrub myself, then when I was thoroughly red I proceeded through the mist to the balcony to relax in the fragrant hot water of the outdoor pool. Sitting at the far end of the balcony, snowflakes from outside refreshed my flushed face while I watched a couple of determined boarders slowly making their way down the mountain in what was rapidly approaching blizzard conditions.

That's when they entered.

Three tall, lean mean with spiky hair straight out of Dragonball Z, suspicious demeanours and tattoos swirling around their arms and backs cautiously sat down in the tub next to me. They cracked open beers and were talking in rough Japanese. My eyes widened and my heart began to thump as I pondered the possibilities.

No question about it, I was about to have my first encounter with the yakuza, the Japanese mafia. And we were all naked.

I gulped and continued to feign interest in the ski slopes, but the truth was it was now snowing so hard that I could only make out a lone boarder, stationery at the top of the moguls, pondering his fate. Everyone else was inside drinking Sapporo draught.

Everyone except me.

I started wishing I had brought my own can with me. I had arranged to meet Kim at 2 and it must have been getting close. I noticed that the guy in the middle with a large blue butterfly on his chest was wearing a gold Rolex watch, and after patiently waiting for an appropriate time to interject, I decided to pluck up the courage to initiate a conversation.

"Uh, excuse me. Do you have the time?"

Butterfly man looked surprised and exchanged looks with his henchmen. I got worried. I started thinking that maybe they had assumed I didn't speak any Japanese and had been discussing their latest hit, or their next big job. I hadn't really been listening, but I would have had a hard time understanding the slang they were using anyway. But now they might worry that I had overheard something I shouldn't have.

He turned back to me and grinned. His teeth were both gold and black. "Sure, it's quarter to two."

I nodded and breathed a small sigh of relief, thanking him in far more polite Japanese than I would normally use with another bloke in a bath, just in case.

And so our conversation began. They asked me where I was from, what I did, commented on my profound mastery of the Japanese language (a common response should any foreigner say anything more advanced than sumimasen). And in return I tentatively asked them, if it wasn't too much trouble, just what it was they did for a living. The response floored me.

"We're hairdressers."

"Hairdressers?"

"Yeah. In Tokyo."

"All of you?"

"Yeah, all of us."

I tried not to act surprised and continued chatting with them about how good the skiing was in Niseko, how much it was snowing today, and what the most popular hair style was in Japan these days. They turned out to be really friendly guys, and butterfly man even ran off to the vending machine to buy me a beer. It was hilarious, we chatted about wax and gel and chemicals used to dye your hair, a far cry from the extortion and missing fingers that I had previously planned on asking them about.

But still interesting enough to make me half an hour late in meeting Kim. She didn't look impressed when I told her my excuse was I had been bathing with yakuza.

Well, sort of.

Submitted by Matthew Magain