How my life in Japan has shaped Black Altar

Before this I spent a lot of time  in Japan. 

I’ve been going to Japan for 1 – 3 months at a time for the last 10 years. Here’s what my time there taught me about baths and cleansing and why I think it’s a ritual worth holding almost as sacred as sleep and hydration. 

Though my first trip to Japan was 2016 my real experience in Japan started in 2017. In 2017 I landed in Kansai Airport. I got out of a relationship and bought a one way ticket to Japan. I didn’t know at the time I needed to buy a return ticket before I can enter. I sat at customs checking prices and every available ticket was two times more than what I had in my account. Nervous, I reached out to my room mate and best friend at the time Sierra who had just enough to purchase only one ticket. So without asking she bought it. It was a departure from Narita airport which was about 280 miles from where I was and with only $221 to my name I started walking.

The first night, I left the airport at 8pm and started walking. I walked til about 2am up through Osaka where I met the first of many along this journey. I stopped and asked if there were any places near by I could stay and after 10 minutes of chatting he told me I could stay with him. At first I was weary because as a black kid growing up in nyc that wasn’t the kind of thing you did but I was feeling free and invincible so I said sure. When we arrived at his place I formally introduced myself to his daughter and bowed. Simply she made me feel at ease with a “sup”. This experienced shaped how I’d forever interact with Japan. No different from my own home in Brooklyn.

That night he got the shower and bath ready for me. There was a tub and a shower and I thought it was either or. It wasn’t like ours in America where the shower is above the tub. They were separate. This was the norm every where I stayed on this trip. You shower first, then soak in the tub. 

Why would you separate cleaning your skin and soaking? What was the point of it?

Well, when I got south of Fuji-sama (Mt. Fuji), I was educated on it.

Cleaning your body is separate from restoration.

The onsen restored your body; skin, bones, mind, and soul. It was a place to rest the mind and spirit and bring flexibility to your entire being. It was meditation.

And that idea never left me.

Back home, showers always felt like something to get through. Something you did before work, after the gym, before bed. A task.

In Japan I learned it could be something else.

You clean yourself first. Then you restore.

You slow down.

You pay attention.

You leave feeling different than when you entered.

Years later, when Sierra, Sky, and I started working on what would become Black Altar, I realized we weren’t really making soap. We were chasing that feeling. The feeling that taking care of yourself isn’t something you squeeze into the day. It’s part of living well.

That’s why we focus so much on the shower.

Not because it’s where you get clean.

Because it’s one of the few moments in the day that’s entirely yours. Where you might not know it but you’re in a state of meditation.

And if water have the power to restore as much as sleep, maybe a good shower deserves a little more respect than we give it.