A single overnight trip is enough to completely reset my everyday life and give me the feeling that a new one is beginning. The only difference is whether I sleep in my own bed or somewhere on the road — yet the energy I wake up with in the morning is entirely different. And after a trip, the energy I carry back home is elevated too. I have no idea how that mechanism works, but there's no question that travel enriches my daily life.
Day two of my Nara sauna trip. I started the morning with a sauna session at Nara Royal Hotel, then sat down to sketch out a plan for the day. As always, I finish the plan mid-trip — that's just my style. I set off with no itinerary and let impulse and whim steer me. At this point you might be thinking you'd never want to travel with someone like that, but somehow, every trip ends up being fantastic.
So I had to decide where to go next. I already knew there was a super sento a few minutes from the hotel by car — one of the largest in Nara Prefecture. I also knew it had several types of saunas and a groundwater cold plunge bath. I'd wanted to go for a long time. Let's do it. The destination: Yurara no Yu Nara. I visited the sister location, Yurara no Yu Oshikuma, on last year's sauna trip, so this would complete the full Yurara no Yu set.
When I arrived, the parking lot was nearly full despite it being morning. I managed to find a spot, got checked in, and headed to the large communal bath. I changed and walked in to find a high-ceilinged, open space with all kinds of baths lined up throughout. First things first — I always scope out the layout: where the saunas are, where the cold plunge is, where the water station is. Getting familiar with the flow of the place on a first visit makes the whole experience better. If I go in without knowing the layout, things lose their smoothness, so I always check beforehand.
I rinsed off and headed straight to the sauna room. It's a large space with two big far-infrared heaters side by side and a TV to watch. It's not a Finnish-style stone sauna, but there's something nostalgic about a far-infrared heater — it feels like a classic Japanese sauna. The heat is powerful and my body warmed up quickly. Two guys sitting behind me were grumbling about work. I'm pretty sure three rounds of sauna and cold plunge will sort them right out by the time they leave.
Once properly warmed through, I moved to the groundwater cold plunge bath. It's excellent in both size and depth — even with a crowd, I can't imagine there'd ever be a wait. The temperature was 14°C, and just as I expected, the groundwater quality is soft and incredibly comfortable. One slight downside: the cold plunge is far from the outdoor rest area, and there aren't many places to rest inside. In winter, a lot of people want to stay indoors rather than sit outside in the cold, so some chairs inside would go a long way. Sure enough, the outdoor rest area was freezing, and I ended up sitting on a washing area stool to recover.
Yurara no Yu Nara has, in addition to the main sauna, a salt mist sauna and a barley stone sauna — but the salt sauna was out of order, and the barley stone sauna didn't quite hit the temperature I was after, so I completed all three sets in the main sauna alone.
I came out of the large bath, got changed, and thought about grabbing a meal at the restaurant inside — but lunch service hadn't started yet. I checked the clock: 10:30. My internal clock was convinced it was noon. It was too early to head home, and I wasn't ready to leave. As I wondered what to do next, I remembered there was a film I'd been wanting to see. A movie called Eiko no Backhome — a masterpiece depicting the life of Yokota, a player for the Hanshin Tigers — and I'd been wanting to catch it in theaters. I searched for nearby cinemas on Google Maps and found an AEON Mall just a few minutes away by car.
The plan came together: have lunch there, kill some time browsing the mall, watch the movie, and then stop off at a sauna somewhere around Osaka on the way home. With that settled, I left Yurara no Yu Nara behind.
