The Agony And The Ecstasy. Sort Of.

We aren't getting together with my mom and the rest of my family until next weekend, so this Mother's Day was all mine. I woke up to breakfast and gifts on the dining room table: a shiny new iPod from Rigel, a beautiful flower holder (made from a toilet paper roll) from Kiyomi, and an essay Kira wrote titled, "Why My Mom Is The Best." which, interestingly enough, contained the sentence, "Aliens rock!"

They all dropped me off for a Shiatsu massage on Saturday at a small spa that we've been going to for over fifteen years. I'm not a big fan of the big-name spas we have around here. Most of them tend to be gaudy and overdone, and populated by uncommonly beautiful people who, if anything, look like they've been over-pampered their entire lives. I believe they're planted there by the owners to make the rest of us feel inferior, so that one look at our own limp hair and uneven skin and we'll be ready to spend big bucks for that deluxe hair treatment and face transplant.

I've been here a handful of times. Upon entering their impressive lobby you're whisked by a supermodel to your locker which appears to be made out of platinum or chocolate or some other highly desirable material. The jacuzzi area is huge and looks like something out of a porno movie - stone walls, cascading waterfalls, mist swirling about. You expect the three busty blondes at the far end of the pool to start making out at any moment and then joined by a staffer who happens to be hung like a horse. There are attendants standing by with towels and bottles of cold water or a complimentary Botox injection. Your name is called and you're escorted to a private room where you are massaged by a movie star. Depending on what package you signed up for, you are then offered a new Rolex or a hard candy upon your departure. Mine was butterscotch.

Then there's my spa, hidden away in a generic hotel in the middle of downtown, The facilities are clean and minimal and the clientele unglamorous - Japanese tourists, a few locals, and on one occasion a homeless woman who paid her fee, plunked her belongings down and fell asleep on the only bench in the dressing room. She looked so peaceful lying there I didn't have the heart to disturb her, and I was grateful that her Blackberry wasn't going off every five seconds.

An attendant at the front desk greets you cheerily in Japanese. You're handed a locker key, a t-shirt and a pair of disposable shorts that look like a craft project from the local pre-school. You escort yourself to the tiny dressing room, where you change, grab a paper cup of barley tea and head for the jacuzzi or saunas. Maybe you'll stop in the lounge where you'll find three patio recliners and an impressive selection of magazines so you can catch up on your reading in Newsweek and Vanity Fair. Or in my case, People and Us.

Next you enter a large room neatly arranged with fifteen massage tables. The masseuse who greets you is neither supermodel nor movie star, but a sturdy 50-ish Japanese woman from the old country and you're equally amazed and fearful of her large hands. These are the women who invented Shiatsu and who'll kill anyone who says otherwise. Any mention of a Swedish massage or a seaweed wrap will likely get you gales of laughter followed by a thorough ass-pummeling.

And then, in my opinion, the best massage you'll ever have. Rigel and I, being massage fanatics, have searched unsuccessfully for a better spa, maybe one closer to home or one with more impressive facilities. This is the real deal, and they've got the stark ambiance to prove it. There's no music playing and no chatty inquires about your latest screenplay - the only sounds you'll hear are screams as someone receives an elbow kneading unrelentingly into their clavicle. Their techniques are precise and at times freakishly acrobatic. At one point my masseuse was working on my shoulders with her elbows while her knees were hammering the bottoms of my feet. Obviously there was a hidden camera somewhere and our picture will soon be appearing on the internet with the caption, "Asian Ladies Dance Nasty!"

The massage ends with a polite "thank you" and a respectful bow from the masseuse. You stumble out, your body feeling as if it has been trampled by the hooves of a thousand angry bison. In other words, in a state of utter and complete bliss. I leave thinking that the supermodels and the movie stars can have their fancy spa. I have my little corner of heaven waiting for me downtown, and a burly broad from Tokyo just waiting to make me regret it.

Tweet Pin It