Onsen
An onsen, which means hot spring in the Japanese language, is a bathing facility typically located around a hot spring, popular with Japanese locals and tourists.
There are indoor and outdoor onsens, many are part of a ryokan or traditional Japanese inn.
Traditionally, men and women bathed together at the onsen, but separate bathing is now more common in the modern days.
Everyone must wash their bodies and rinse themselves thoroughly before entering the hot water.
Bathing stations, such as the one pictured below, are equipped with stools, faucets, wooden buckets, and toiletries such as soap and shampoo.
All the pictures in this blog post are from a ryokan in Nikko. Let’s go onsen!
Konnichiwa 