Swim

I went swimming this morning at a gym in my neighborhood. Madam Fumiko has membership there, and she brought home two visitor’s coupons. It expired at the end of this month, so I decided to use it so as not to waste it.

Two nice-looking women greeted me as I entered the building, one in her late twenties, and the other probably in her mid forties. The older woman guided me to a low counter on one side of the reception, asked me to take a seat and fill out a form.

When I handed out my visitor’s coupon, I said I got it from my family, so they knew that Madam Fumiko and I were family, but no mention was made about it. I thought they were excessively cautious not to sound too salesperson-like. Something like “Oh, your must be Ms. Yamagata’s son!” wouldn’t have hurt.

But anyhow, soon after I filled out the form, a young nice-looking man took over and guided me to the men’s locker room. Elderly members were slowly changing into fitness outfit there. He explained how the locker worked, and said the pool was downstairs. He said there was another guy at the pool, and he would guide me there, but as he said so, the guy in charge the pool area came up to the locker room by chance, so he and I got to exchange “hi”s there. There was a large bathroom with a sauna and everything next to the locker room, but I ignored it and went straight to the pool.

The pool was already quite crowded with swimmers, mostly elderly women. They should be called walkers because most of them were just wading in shallow water that’s only 1 meter high. There were only four lanes: one for walkers, another for swimmers, and the other two for long-distance swimmers. I took one for long-distance swimmers and swam 1 K in three different styles: crawl, breast stroke, and back.

Once out of the pool, I went to the bathroom and soaked in the bathtub for a while. There had been some old gents when I got there. They were talking about a divorce case of a friend of theirs. One said, “If the wife wants a divorce, that’s it. There’s nothing he can do about it.” I thought the reverse is also true, but of course I didn’t join their conversation…

Quickly shampooing my hair, I got out, put on my regular clothes, went downstairs, and tried to return my visitor’s card. I was kind of expecting something like, “How was it?” But there was nothing but “Otsukaresama”. The staff were kind of low-key, and looked afraid of making any sort of sales approach. Perhaps they did so out of respect to Madam Fumiko who is the least vulnerable person to sales approaches. Or not?

Anyhow, thanks to the free coupon, I was able to start a new week with a tremendously refreshing feeling. There is one more coupon left. I might want to use it on Friday.