Originally Posted by
Pickles
it is possible that the PH Kyoto has female attendants in the male onsen area because it's short-staffed. It could also well be because it's very common to run an onsen that way.
PH Kyoto is not an onsen. And no one was talking about women cleaners in restrooms. Sending 20-something non-dedicated female staff into male changing rooms is not standard practice. >50 yr old women are a different matter.
Having young female staff at PH Kyoto scream and run out of the male changing room upon finding a male guest wrapped in a towel is not a good sign for how well the spa bath is being managed.
I consider it irrelevant, but I would estimate that I have visited public Japanese-style (a large bath to accommodate multiple users and stool-type individual washing areas) facilities ( including sento, gym facilities, ryokan, onsen hotels, and western style hotels with public baths) at least 4,000 times, and I can recall only 3 occasions where there were young female attendants exposed to male nudity. In most cases we Japanese find this embarrassing (I'm not quite sure why we find the >50 yr old women as ignorable as wallpaper, but that is different), on an escalating scale of sento<onsen< ryokan<hotel.
And I do not need a humor columnist to tell me my country's culture.