Onsens

One of my favorite features of Japanese culture, ancient and modern, is the reverence they give to bathing. To take a bath is an activity to take pleasure in: is often communal, sometimes in public and is almost always in, what feels to me, very hot water. There are public baths, called Sentos, where regular water is heated to about 42 °C, sometimes hotter, and men and women soak separately in huge baths. And then there are Onsens, which are natural hot springs, rich in minerals and salts and rising straight from the depths of the earth. There are many different kinds of Onsens found all over Japan: some are pubic, some private; some are a part of a Ryokan, or traditional Japanese inn or a hotel; some are indoors, but my very favorite are outdoors and are called Rotenburo or Notenburo. Here you get to soak under the stars, if you are bathing at night, or sometimes enjoy a mountain scene or views of a tumbling river or bamboo forest. The form is to bathe naked and to wash before you get in the bath, either using the showers around the bath area or dipping a bowl into the bath water and sluicing it over yourself as you sit on the tiniest stool imaginable. Small towels are often carried in a nod to modesty but basically, people are comfortable being naked. There are some baths I have been to that are mixed men and women, but these are a rarity these days and were in quite remote areas; in those cases people tended to cover themselves with a thin towel even in the water. Apart from the beautiful setting of the Onsen, what is also important is the water itself. Each different source of hot spring may have a different chemical composition and so be recommended for a different ailment. Some of the water is a milky white, some has a reddish tinge depending on the minerals and salts contained. Some resort style Onsens have a variety of tubs each containing different types of water, they may be different temperatures or perhaps have some with herbal infuses and even one I went to had a red wine bath!
My favorite way to bathe is in a ‘family bath’, which means that you have the use of a private bath in a secluded area for one or two hours. Because these baths are usually smaller than the public baths, in some places the water is changed between each family. These are ‘The Ritzes’ of the Onsen world!


Key to pictures:
1 & 2 Mikawa, Kumamoto.
3 Yamaga, Kumamoto.
4 Tonohara, Oita (downstream from the famous Kamakura Onsen).
5 Kokonoe, Oita.
6 Suetate, Oita. (the bath is a hollowed-out tree).