Sentou of Recent Article

What is SENTOU?

In Japan, there are not only baths in the home but also SENTOU, or communal bathhouses.

SENTOU is a type of Japanese communal bath house where customers pay for entrance.

Users pay fees for entrance(called bandai; 番台).
The owner of SENTO or his family receives the fees at Bandai.
The SENTOU fee in Tokyo is 450yen(about 5.3dollars) in 2011.

"Sen(洗)" of sento means fee, and "Tou(湯)" of sento means hot water.

And each SENTOU has two big rooms that separate men and women.
Traditionally these bath houses have been quite utilitarian, with one large room separating the sexes by a tall barrier, and on both sides, usually a minimum of lined up faucets and a single large bath for the already washed bathers to sit in among others.　(Sentou's Layout: Borrowed from Wikipedia)

And you can see the inside of SENTOU on this web page.

People are required to wash themselves first, and then they can bathe in a big bathtub to relax and sometimes communicate with other bathers.

Some Japanese find social importance in going to public baths, out of the theory that physical proximity/intimacy brings emotional intimacy, which is termed skin-ship(=Physical contact) in Japanese.