Natural hot springs (onsen) are numerous and highly popular across Japan. There are many types of hot springs, distinguished by the minerals dissolved in the water. Different minerals provide different health benefits, and all hot springs are supposed to have a relaxing effect on your body and mind, especially after a day on the bike.
Hot spring baths come in many varieties, indoors and outdoors, gender separated and mixed, developed and undeveloped. An overnight stay at a hot spring hotel or guest house is a highly recommended experience to any visitor of Japan.
Below are the way that you take one of these baths;
1)
Take off all your clothes in the changing room and place them into a basket together with your bath towel. Coin lockers for valuables are often available.
2)
Japanese hot springs are enjoyed in your birthday suit, or naked. Swimming suits are not allowed in most places. However, it is the custom to bring a small towel into the bathing area, with which you can enhance your privacy while outside of the water. Once you enter the bath, keep the towel out of the water.
3)
Before entering the bath, rinse your body with water from either a tap or the bath using a washbowl provided in the bathing area. Just rinsing your body is usually sufficient unless you are excessively dirty, in which case you want to use soap.
4)
Enter the bath and soak for a while. Note that the bath water can be very hot (typical temperatures are 40 to 44 degrees). If it feels too hot, try to enter very slowly and move as little as possible.
5)
After soaking for a while, get out of the bath and wash your body with soap at a water tap, while sitting on a stool. Soap and shampoo are provided in some baths. Like in private Japanese bathrooms, make sure that no soap gets into the bath water. Tidy up your space after you finished cleaning your body.
6)
Re-enter the bath and soak some more.
7)
After you finished soaking, do not rinse your body with tap water, for the minerals to have full effect on your body.
Lured to Hokkaido for the snow, my life has been all about the winters. Spring would arrive, the snow would melt and then would be off to the southern hemisphere for another winter. I owned one pair of shorts and the only real tan that I got was of the racoon variety from the ski goggles!
So I decided on a summer, bought a bike and proceded to discover Hokkaido beyond the snow. What I found was a cyclists’ utopia. http://www.biketoursjapan.com
