The sento closed. The balconies got bathrooms.

The first blocks at Kyomachi Danchi in Sakaide came without bathrooms. From the raised housing deck, a staircase led down near the neighborhood sento. When the bathhouse shut in 1985, residents started building bathrooms onto their balconies. One ground-floor addition reached out into the garden. A woman who lived there used her balcony bath when her daughter was around. Years later, the room was cold and drafty, and she worried about slipping while alone. By 2018, she was going out twice a week for the first soak at 2:30 p.m. She saw people she knew, and the bathhouse owner looked out for her. Yanagi-yu, Sakaide’s last neighborhood sento, closed at the end of 2025. When a rental has no shower, “there’s a sento nearby” sounds like something that comes with the room. The second place you’d actually walk to on a cold night matters just as much.