Japan's Hot Spring Spas Add Erotic Spice to Life!

TOKYO – Several hundred million years ago the earth's mantle opened up and spewed forth the Japanese islands, leaving a ring of volcanoes and thermal vents from the northernmost island of Hokkaido to the southern island of Kyushu.

Present-day Japan has 10 percent of the earth's volcanoes and more active volcanoes than any other country. There are more than 10,000 well-known thermal vents in the crust of Japan, and over 2,100 of these have been developed into onsen (own-sen), or hot spring bath spas. Japan's hot spring spas can be found in mountain gorges and valleys, on the waists of mountains, along the sides of peninsulas, and on the coasts. Some hot springs bubble up from the seabed offshore.

There is one in the middle of Tokyo Bay that has been tapped for a new, spectacular hot spring spa complex on the man-made island of Odaiba. The larger of the hot springs vents have given birth to hundreds of resort villages and towns. Some of them, like Atami, Beppu and Ito, qualify as cities.

Smaller onsen have 15 to 30 inns and hotels that feature hot mineral baths and the other amenities of a Japanese style spa. Larger onsen have from 30 to 300 inns and hotels. The largest one, Beppu, has some 700 inns, and attracts upwards of a million visitors a year.

Hokkaido alone has 193 onsen spas, and over 1,500 thermal springs. Shizuoka Prefecture, about an hour south of Tokyo by Bullet Train, has only 71 hot spring resort spas, but it has over 2,100 thermal springs.

Hundreds of Japan's thermal springs have been in commercial use as spas for at least 1,500 years. Numerous events of special significance that occurred in the baths have made the history books.

One of the more interesting: Yoritomo Minamoto, the founder in 1192 of Japan's shogunate form of government was a regular visitor. His favorite: Kusatsu, in Gunma Prefecture northwest of present-day Tokyo, because the high mineral content of its waters made his rheumatism better. During the famous Tokugawa Shogunate era (1603-1867), successive Shoguns had water brought from the Kusatsu springs to Edo (Tokyo) for their daily baths.

All of the 2,000-plus hot spring spas that are members of the Japan Spa Association have had their waters analyzed for their mineral content, and provide specific details on their efficacy in curing and relieving a variety of physical and mental illnesses. In the last century, Japan's onsen have gone from being just health resorts catering to those with problems to being both health and recreational destinations, with a variety of activities and facilities.

Today, onsen spas attract huge numbers of regular vacationers, including families, as well as honeymooners and lovers. Many people go to onsen for days or weeks when they are doing some kind of work project that requires peace and quiet. Others use them as retreats, when they want to opt out of the hubbub of urban life for a weekend or longer.

For the last century, the spas around Lake Hakone, an hour's train ride from Tokyo and adjoining Mt. Fuji, have attracted many foreign notables. There is almost always a sprinkling of foreign visitors at all major hot spring spas, particularly those in the vicinity of Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe.

Some onsen feature rotenburo (roh-tane-buu-roh) or outside baths that look like small, shallow swimming pools set among picturesque volcanic boulders. Many of the rotenburo have magnificent views of the surrounding areas. Mixed-sex bathing is still practiced in some hot spring spas, but not in local public onsen.

All resort spas have private baths for couples and families. [Regular TV promotional travel stories on the country’s spas often show men and women bathing together in large communal baths—with their modesty protected by small tenugui (tay-nuu-gooey) hand towels covering key body parts.] The foreign visitor who leaves Japan without having had the hot spring spa experience has missed a major opportunity to enjoy one of the special pleasures the country has to offer.

For the visitor who cannot get beyond Tokyo, there is the new Oedo Onsen Monogatari (Oh-eh-doh Own-sen Moe-no-gah-tah-ree) on Odaiba islet in Tokyo Bay, only a few minutes from the center of the city. This huge complex is built as an Edo era onsen village, with restaurants and shops that are right out of the Tokugawa Shogunate period of Japan.

Copyright © 2007 by Boye Lafayette De Mente
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Boye Lafayette De Mente has been involved with Japan, Korea, China and Mexico since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on these countries, including the first books ever on the Japanese way of doing business: Japanese Etiquette & Ethics in Business, first published in 1959, and How to Do Business in Japan, published in 1961.

To see a complete list of his titles [each one linked to Amazon.com’s buy page], go to his personal website: http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/.