High expectations often lead to disappointment, but when you expect little, you sometimes find something that far exceeds your imagination. My experience at Sayamago Onsen Nijinoyu Osaka Sayama was exactly that.
That day, I had visited Nobuhano-yu Honten Habikino in the morning and done 4 sets of sauna starting from early in the day, then checked into my hotel at 15:00 and taken a nap. I have no habit of setting an alarm when I sleep, so only the gods know when I'll wake up. I fell asleep just after 3 PM, and when I opened my eyes it was 6 PM. Three whole hours of napping. The sun had set and everything outside had gone dark. In that case, there was only one place to go. The sauna. I needed to find a facility worthy of shaking off the grogginess and wrapping up the day. That was how I decided to visit Sayamago Onsen Nijinoyu Osaka Sayama.
Nijinoyu is located in Osaka Sayama City in Osaka Prefecture — a place I would likely never visit in my life without some specific reason. With a spirit of cherishing this one-time encounter, I drove to my destination. When I arrived, I found a remarkably large facility, impeccably clean, with design-forward interiors that immediately caught the eye. I headed up to the large communal bath on the second floor and stripped off my clothes in record time. First, I washed up and made my way to the outdoor bath. At Nijinoyu's rotenburo, you can soak in natural hot spring water drawn from deep underground while watching a waterfall. The rock face directly in front of the outdoor bath forms a cliff, with water cascading down from above. It was an wonderfully open space, and I relaxed there for a while. The outdoor area also featured other unique touches, like an egg-shaped tsubo-yu bath designed by a renowned designer — experiences you simply couldn't have anywhere else.
After warming my body thoroughly in the natural hot spring, I headed to the sauna room. Stepping inside, I found a large stone stove stacked high with rocks standing at the center of the room, with seating arranged all around it. The combination of automatic löyly every 10 minutes and occasional staff-performed löyly kept the humidity high, and the aroma was wonderful. On top of that, there was no TV inside the sauna room, and the lighting was kept quite dim. In a spot where a TV might have been installed in the original design, a bundled birch branch vihta was displayed instead. Naturally, talking was prohibited. The temperature, humidity, fragrance, and lighting were all exactly to my taste. I sat cross-legged, slowly closed my eyes, and focused my senses on the heat and scent of the sauna. Honestly, I hadn't expected much from the sauna here, but stumbling upon something this extraordinary was a stroke of incredible luck. When you encounter something that exceeds your imagination in the most unexpected place, your sense of happiness multiplies several times over. Wrapped in that feeling of joy, I broke into a good, satisfying sweat.
The cold plunge bath is located right outside the sauna room. The wall is lined with premium charcoal, and water flows continuously along it. The charcoal-filtered water has a pleasing softness to it. The space fits about three people, so it felt a little snug, but when I got in, I had it to myself. Lucky. The water temperature was around 15°C — an incredibly well-balanced range. I cooled my body down for about a minute and then settled into a resting chair.
Nijinoyu also seems to put real thought into its relaxation spaces. In addition to the many chairs set up throughout the spacious outdoor bath area, chairs are placed at various spots inside the indoor bath as well, so you can sit down whenever you need a breather. There's also a dedicated outdoor air-bathing area, so even with many guests around, you'd never be short of space. It's perfect for quietly reaching totonou on your own, or for chatting with friends while soaking. A truly excellent facility.
Afterward, I repeated the sauna → cold plunge → rest cycle 3 more sets. Fortunately, no one was talking inside the sauna room here, which allowed me to turn my awareness fully inward. Getting a great experience at a facility is rarely something you can achieve on your own. I came to feel on this trip that reaching a truly sublime state of totonou requires a kind of unspoken coordination with the other guests around you — as evidenced by the incident at Nobuhano-yu Honten Habikino.
After leaving the main bath area, I lay down on the tatami floor inside the facility for a while before deciding to have dinner at the restaurant. At the table next to where I was seated, two women were engaged in a heated conversation. "That's why I told my husband — if you're going to cheat, do it right in front of me!" Well, I could more or less grasp the general idea. She seemed absolutely furious. The other woman looked like she was being steamrolled. It was none of my business, so I felt fairly relaxed about it, but the one woman looked like she was about to boil over — she might have been better off jumping in the sauna and cold plunge before dinner. That might have helped her cool down enough for a calmer conversation.
All kinds of problems arise in life, and within yourself, new problems emerge every day. Stress builds up. Things happen that you can't do anything about. Sometimes you lose your sense of direction. When that happens, my first move is to get in the sauna. I do 3 sets of sauna and cold plunge, and then reconsider. Sometimes a new solution comes to mind. Other times, whatever I had been agonizing over suddenly seems like it doesn't matter at all. On the other hand, there are things that even the sauna can't resolve. I take those to be the truly important ones. Most things, once you've cleared your head with a few rounds of sauna and cold plunge, you've already forgotten.
The woman next to me might scold me for being too carefree, so I'll leave it there for today.
