Birthday Suit Hot Spring

The Japanese Hot Springs are called Onsen

Different minerals provide different health benefits, and all hot springs are supposed to have a relaxing effect on your body and mind.

 

Now the hot springs are a little different from what you are use to in the US. Here are the Japanese rules:

 

1)	Take off all your clothes in the changing room and place them into a basket together with your bath towel.

2)

Japanese hot springs are enjoyed 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. READ THIS RULE AGAIN LOL

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. Traditionally, just rinsing your body is considered sufficient (and many older baths do not even provide showers and soap), but particularly among younger bathers you will find an increasing number of people who insist on taking a shower before entering the bath these days.

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. I DID NOT READ THIS RULE AND WAS CHUGGING WATER TO STAY HYDRATED!

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)

After you finished soaking, do not rinse your body with tap water, for the hot spring water's minerals to have full effect on your body.   Now that you've read the rules, let me clarify a few things. This was a Women's Only Onsen. However, young children of all genders were free to come and go. Might of had a very awkward moment with a 4 year old boy. Also, being a curvy black lady, a rare sight in Japan, is even more of a skeptical in the nude. Haha. What an experience!! Our view of an active volcano So refreshing