Traveling to Tokyo: Enjoying Japanese Men

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Hostel stays: Fond memories of male nudity among strangers

For those who are interested, here are our members' memories of youth hostelling, and the joys of naked boys on road or rail trips.

[ Note from Kelly (sunbuns), blog editor: The stories below are from email group exchanges on the YMNA, Young Men's Nudist Association, a Google group.  The longest ones are written by David or atitlan, moderator of the group. I also have written many times about this topic, and find the situations one encounters in hostels to be wonderful ways to get to know people and find out things about oneself in the process. ]

If you wanted to travel when I was a teenager, it was either unaffordable - and lonely - hotel rooms or it was youth hostels, which were cheap and always had people to talk to. I stayed in numerous youth hostels in Britain, Germany, Austria, Italy and Israel. No two were alike. They might be a 16-bedded farmhouse in the middle of nowhere or a huge city building with dorms each holding 100. A hot shower was a luxury only some offered; at other hostels it might be a cold-water morning wash from a basin. There were chores to be done. At one mountain hostel I had to go out and gather wood so in the evening we could huddle around a welcome fire with only gas lanterns to take us to bed.

A real feeling of camaraderie could build up. Strangers became fast friends, particularly if they met up again at another hostel later on. When I was 17, I hitch-hiked up to Scotland and found myself constantly bumping into a handsome dark-haired French lad of the same age. His name was Thierry and he wanted to be a brain surgeon. One evening I persuaded him and a girl to go for a walk in the forest outside our Scottish castle hostel. I still remember the intense look he gave me and the feeling of his hand on my shoulder but we were not alone, nothing happened and we never met again.

I am not sure why you were told all Americans slept nude because that was not my experience of Americans in youth hostels. I slept nude and so did some of the others in the male dorms but most seemed to wear what we in Britain call y-fronts. These did not hide much when it was time to get up, with morning erections producing tent poles. Lying on a bottom bunk, I would find it difficult not to laugh when the top bunk occupant clambered down, his tented underwear only inches from my face. I always preferred the top bunk to sleep naked.......

The oddest thing about the dorms was the casual nudity. Because we as strangers got to know each other so quickly, we would carry on conversations in the dorm. I remember in Italy a young cyclist with a pleasant but not handsome face getting undressed while talking to me, only for this ugly duckling to turn into a swan. He was hiding a spectacular swimmer's muscled physique. He then stood there naked and full-frontal until he had finished what he wanted to tell me.

My most eye-popping experience of youth hostel nudity came when I was backpacking around Israel.  I was staying next to the Dead Sea, alone in a long line of

inter-connected communal showers after a sticky day on a bus through the West Bank. Suddenly the shower room was invaded by a dozen American 16 year-olds looking very fit in their white towels. These were quickly discarded and it became clear they were far more dirty than me, covered in mud from a caving expedition. They were full of excited chatter about the events of the day. I was unsure where to look. With difficulty, I averted my gaze and got back to washing myself. Until that is I was aware of three of them crowding around and almost touching me. Please could I tell them how to turn the showers on, they had never seen a faucet like these. So I had to give them a demonstration. A testing time!

The attached pictures try to convey some of this. A few of the hostels could be old and basic, like the first photo, others might be more comfortable like the second.



The third image illustrates the camaaderie. The fourth an impression of what it was like huddled together in those open showers.

atitlan

On Wed, 13 Apr 2011 22:03 +0200, "Fred Stein" <fredstein3@hotmail.com> wrote:

Bring back happy memories. I was very young in the early 70´s - before the interail - lifting around Europe - living in Youth Hostels! In a way when the world still was innocent for a young man. Think of some stories but probably a bit off-topic - f.i. how I was taught that all Americans sleep nude (at the Youth Hostel in Hannover) .... I would love to hear stories from your days meeting guys a bit more simple as today...
Sorry for my English - not my native language ....

---

  Same experience here, Atitlan. I traveled much of Europe via International Youth Hostel Association. In more cases than not, the hostels were reasonably modern with large dorm areas -- a dozen or more sleeping areas in a room. Even those which were older, and re-structured from former usages (large homes, etc.) had shared accommodation with "total strangers". Nudity -- and by that, I mean, non-sexual and comfortable nudity -- was common: changing clothing, sleeping, showering and traveling to-from the showers. Conversations like, "I have 60 Swedish kroner. They're worth just a little more than a French franc. I'm leaving early in the morning on the ferry and won't be able to get to a bank. Do you have enough francs to exchange for me?" were conducted nude, and the exchange made.
Admittedly, this was in the 1960's and 70's. It was definitely a "different time" from today's common "shame in nudity".
Alic

---------- Another Forwarded response to the above messages ----------

Well, thank you Fred! For those who are interested, here is my memory of youth hostelling.

If you wanted to travel when I was a teenager, it was either unaffordable - and lonely - hotel rooms or it was youth hostels, which were cheap and always had people to talk to. I stayed in numerous youth hostels in Britain, Germany, Austria, Italy and Israel. No two were alike. They might be a 16-bedded farmhouse in the middle of nowhere or a huge city building with dorms each holding 100. A hot shower was a luxury only some offered; at other hostels it might be a cold-water morning wash from a basin. There were chores to be done. At one mountain hostel I had to go out and gather wood so in the evening we could huddle around a welcome fire with only gas lanterns to take us to bed.

A real feeling of camaraderie could build up. Strangers became fast friends, particularly if they met up again at another hostel later on. When I was 17, I hitch-hiked up to Scotland and found myself constantly bumping into a handsome dark-haired French lad of the same age. His name was Thierry and he wanted to be a brain surgeon. One evening I persuaded him and a girl to go for a walk in the forest outside our Scottish castle hostel. I still remember the intense look he gave me and the feeling of his hand on my shoulder but we were not alone, nothing happened and we never met again.

I am not sure why you were told all Americans slept nude because that was not my experience of Americans in youth hostels. I slept nude and so did some of the others in the male dorms but most seemed to wear what we in Britain call y-fronts. These did not hide much when it was time to get up, with morning erections producing tent poles. Lying on a bottom bunk, I would find it difficult not to laugh when the top bunk occupant clambered down, his tented underwear only inches from my face. I always preferred the top bunk to sleep naked.......

The oddest thing about the dorms was the casual nudity. Because we as strangers got to know each other so quickly, we would carry on conversations in the dorm. I remember in Italy a young cyclist with a pleasant but not handsome face getting undressed while talking to me, only for this ugly duckling to turn into a swan. He was hiding a spectacular swimmer's muscled physique. He then stood there naked and full-frontal until he had finished what he wanted to tell me.

My most eye-popping experience of youth hostel nudity came when I was backpacking around Israel. I was staying next to the Dead Sea, alone in a long line of

inter-connected communal showers after a sticky day on a bus through the West Bank. Suddenly the shower room was invaded by a dozen American 16 year-olds looking very fit in their white towels. These were quickly discarded and it became clear they were far more dirty than me, covered in mud from a caving expedition. They were full of excited chatter about the events of the day. I was unsure where to look. With difficulty, I averted my gaze and got back to washing myself. Until that is I was aware of three of them crowding around and almost touching me. Please could I tell them how to turn the showers on, they had never seen a faucet like these. So I had to give them a demonstration. A testing time!

The attached pictures try to convey some of this. A few of the hostels could be old and basic, like the first photo, others might be more comfortable like the second. The third image illustrates the camaraderie. The fourth an impression of what it was like huddled together in those open showers.

Stay bare
atitlan

Ironic Airport Encounter - Helping out a Teen

My plane dropped into PHX airport on Dec 31 at 9:30am and while waiting for my connecting flight to San Diego, I met this very cute (and apparently str8) high school teen boy-jock next to me in the airport lounge. He started the conversation because there was a lone sparrow flying around in the waiting area. He was also going to San Diego but was on stand-by... without much hope of getting home until an evening flight (according to the US Airways ground staff).

We kept talking - I was in a generous and talkative mood.. he seemed to be a genuinely sweet kid and showed interest when I mentioned where I was traveling from (and to). We got into a conversation about his future career possibilities and I encouraged him to consider trying to actualize his dreams and to actually get into medical school - not just sports therapy.



His parents had sent to Phoenix for a week-long professional league baseball camp. He is still a sophomore in high school. We also got on the topic of gun control and he was claiming that Arizona' less strict gun control laws and restrictions on private citizens owning and bearing arms were a much stronger deterrent to illegal hand guns than in his native state of California. We were both enjoying the lively banter... and the sparrow still kept flying around -- in and among all the busy in the busy airport lounger - to our amusement.

A bit later, the airline gate staff called for anybody who had no checked luggage and who would be willing to give up their seat to go on another flight (actually an earlier one that had been delayed in departing). I told the kid (Steven age 15) that I was going to go on that flight so that he could get a seat. I was just about ready to adopt him when he said that he wanted to come with me (nothing 'sexual' intended I presume). He followed me up to the other gate but I made him go back and stay with the flight that had his bag.

He kept saying he enjoyed talking to me...... I was very flattered.


So after a rather long and unanticipated wait again on the jetway, this plane eventually departed and the again still-further delayed flight reached San Diego only a few minutes before the one that Steven (hopefully) was on.

I couldn't help striking up a conversation with the woman next to me. She and her daughter were returning from a visit to her family (parents) in Phoenix and she had only been able to get this flight - since evidently everything was completely booked all day long to San Diego. We figured it probably had something to do with increased air travel to the greater LA area for the New Year's Day Rose Parades (and / or Bowl games).


 This plane was supposed to have departed at 8:45 or so, but due to mechanical trouble (Uh oh!) it had been delayed until a nearly 11:00am departure. Now I was sitting on it, and waiting impatiently for it to depart, wondering if Steven, the high school hottie (he makes Zac Efron look like a dork).

Oh well.. I wondered if I should have encouraged him to come along and catch this flight - instead of taking a chance that my giving up my flight on that flight would actually benefit him. There seemed to be plenty of extra seats on this flight. I could have insisted (as Premier Exec) that Steven's bag be pulled and that he get on this flight with me -- so we would have had a chance to get to know each other better.

He really was a sweet, affable young man. He dreamed of being an athlete, but he was also realistic about his chances of becoming a professional one. So his 'backup' career was to become a sports injury rehabilitation therapist. Maybe the idea of massaging injured athletes' muscled legs and bulky arms or broken bones was appealing to him.. the thought of which certainly got my juices stirring.

When the plan was landing, I realized that my other flight should be landing at about the same time.



Although I thought better of it (for a moment), I know I just had to find out if he had made it or not to San Diego on that flight. So I asked at the gate where we deplaned and found out what gate his planed had landed at. By the time I got there, the passengers had already disembarked so I ran to baggage claim.

There he was waiting around the baggage carousel for his bags.. It first he appeared not to notice me or to not recognize me.. but I waved anyway. I seemed strange that he would look surprised to see me. Then it dawned that he was actually worried to see me. He'd changed this shirt (maybe just taken off his team jersey) and removed his baseball cap - more like he was trying to disguise himself. It made me realize that his parents had probably warned him of the possibility of a my being a stalker or a child molester roaming the airport in Phoenix, trying to pick up teen boys.

Maybe it wasn't anything like that at all... since he probably had assumed by earlier 'flight' had longer ago arrived -- well before his - but in reality our planes landed just minutes apart.

Despite all these thoughts flashing through my head, I knew I really done what I did for him - as a selfless act. I wasn't going to let his possibility misconstruing my act prevent me from greeting him. I didn't let those fears deter me...so I came up to him smiling and told him I just want to know if he'd make it safely and on that flight. I explained that my flight did leave Phoenix until just little while before his - so that why we landed just minutes apart. He seemed pre-occupied. Maybe he was afraid I'd grab him .. he was not the same boy who had so easily and self-confidently spoken to me just a couple of hours before.

He kind of stumbled as if he didn't know what to say.. and I shook his hand and said goodbye, and good luck. There was not even a word of polite gratitude. I know my 'act of kindness' was probably not that critical -- maybe a lot of people had given up their seat and changed flights or whatever.. so he might very well have be able to catch it as a stand-by passenger. I felt I learned a slightly bittersweet lesson. People can accept the act of a good Samaritan, but they don't actually appreciate the Samaritan coming back to seek any recognition or acknowledgement.

It was strange how an act of kindness can sometimes be misconstrued. I don't have any real evidence that he felt that way - -but i seemed so apparent in his reaction to seeing me suddenly appear in San Diego - he looked shocked or suddenly fearful. I just knew he was thinking the worst was about to happen.

Later that night when I discovered that my red-eye flight to Chicago had been cancelled, I thought to myself "No good deed goes unpunished."

I hadn't told anyone this story - and just remembered it when I thought of Abe (some I know who lives in Phoenix - an online-only acquaintance) whom I accidentally found that as a friend of a friend on a popular social networking site). I told him by e-mail privately but later decided to write it as a blog entry because it also strikes at the root of something that really bothers me about American society - the Victimization of the American Teen. We hear nothing more powerfully damaging to our psycho-social status (as gay males) than to be lumped into a category of CHILD MOLESTER. The fear of 'child molestation' is now so pandemic that it is affects how ALL men and women either as parents, teachers, or just innocent bystanders are treating (or ignoring) the education and socialization of children, adolescents and young adults.

I will some day write more about this issue.