Mark Willacy reported this story on Sunday, September 2, 2012 07:01:00

ELIZABETH JACKSON: It's a place that demands Zen-like discipline - a place where a Samurai-style code enforced by zealous guards ensures self-restraint and order.



It's not Japan's imperial palace or a Buddhist monastery, but the local swimming pool in Tokyo.



As our Tokyo correspondent, Mark Willacy, has discovered first-hand, Japan is infamous for its plethora of pedantic pool rules, from bans on sunscreen to being forced to wear swimming caps, to everyone having to get out of the pool every hour for a forced rest and inspection.



Recently, Mark's visit to the local pool almost resulted in a fistfight; as he now recounts for Correspondents' Report.



MARK WILLACY: I'd vowed never to go back. Not since that first visit to a Japanese public pool almost four years ago.



All I wanted to do then was take my daughters to the pool behind our home for a swim, to sit on a deckchair, read the newspapers and watch as they frolicked in the water.



But entering this temple of doom, I was immediately instructed to remove my footwear and to deposit them in a bag.



As I was hustled into a change-room, I tried to explain in halting Japanese that I'd just come to watch my kids, not to swim.



In the change-room I searched for a way out, eventually finding a corridor leading to the pool.



But as I walked down the corridor, showers mounted on the walls automatically drenched me and my bundle of weekend newspapers.



Emerging into the covered pool area fully clothed and dripping wet, I was immediately surrounded by a phalanx of lifeguards, each swathed in red uniforms and bellowing at me through orange cones.



And it was when one fellow grabbed me by the arm that I realised that this wasn't a place of frolicking children, or deckchairs, or a refuge for a leisurely morning of reading newspapers.



It was a place where everyone was expected to wear a bathing cap, have their locker key fastened around their wrist, and was expected to do plodding laps up and down the pool. Spectators were banned, as were tattoos, G-strings, diving, splashing, or any display of happiness or fun.



Later I was handed a list of rules, translated into English, for foreign idiots such as myself.



I've kept them, and here are few highlights.



VOICEOVER: The persons with infectious diseases and the drunkens are not admittable.



Avoid unruly behaviour, such as immoral deeds and horseplay, which can be annoyance to other users.



Watch out for loss of clothes and for robbers. We disclaim any responsibility for them.



MARK WILLACY: Anna Cock is an Australian journalist and keen swimmer who's lived in Tokyo for nearly seven years.



She's even written of her run ins with the pool pedants; the lifeguards who, like Saudi Arabia's morality police, stalk about, pouncing on anyone daring to have fun.



Their main job is to haul swimmers out of the pool every hour for 10 minutes of enforced rest.



ANNA COCK: Yeah, they actually look quite nervous as soon as they see a foreigner enter the pool area, because they know that several rules are going to be broken, and they're going to have to intervene in a very stern manner.



Particularly during the rest period, they'll stand poolside and they look a little like air traffic controllers.



I think they're indicating that they've looked at a particular part of the pool, and have decided that it's clear of band aids and drowned toddlers or whatever it is that they're looking for.



MARK WILLACY: As for Australians, well, Anna Cock believes they are a particular enemy of the Japanese pool system.



ANNA COCK: The other thing you need to be careful of, if you haven't been to a Japanese pool before, if you've got any tattoos, you need to keep them covered up. There're special rules about tattoos, which I imagine for Australians would be a major problem, because a lot of Australians have tattoos.



You see a lot of people that do go to the pool, they have to cover themselves in plaster. They look like mummies, all bound up.





MARK WILLACY: Having stuck to my vow of shunning Japanese pools for four years, I recently agreed to take my family for a dip. It was a different pool, my wife assured me, one with fewer rules.



Again, it was shoes off at the front gate. Again, there was a mandatory blast from the automatic showers.



Then I was in the pool, in waist deep waters watching my kids enjoying themselves.



But of course, it didn't last. Looming up behind me, a lifeguard ordered me to remove my glasses.



I decided to challenge him, pointing out that another father in the pool was also wearing his specs.



So the lifeguard marched over to the man and demanded he too take off his glasses.



But this guy was having none of it. Leaving his young son tottering in the water, he leapt out of the pool and began screaming at the lifeguard.



This pimply youth, used to the quivering obedience of his charges, didn't know what to do.



And like long suffering citizens sensing weakness in a dictatorship, the irate father went further and began to push the lifeguard.



Another lifeguard appeared to help. He too got shoved.



In the end, a compromise was worked out. The man could keep his glasses on if he wore a strap on them.



And that's how I sparked the revolution, and how it challenged decades of authoritarian pool rule.



This is Mark Willacy in Tokyo for Correspondents Report.