A paid web magazine, chosen by one editor on foot · Issue 01
Japan's finest onsen and sauna, in 65 places.
Japan has thousands of onsen and sauna, and every list looks the same. Where do you spend a trip you may only take once? From the places I bathed in myself and those I chose through my own reporting, I kept only the ones I would go back to — and introduce them one by one.
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Foreword
I want to go back again Only the places that made me feel that way
Japan has more onsen and saunas than anyone could count.
In the mountains, by the sea and in the middle of cities, there are places each with a charm of its own. Some are famous; others are still little known.
But if you are going to travel in Japan, I don’t believe that just anywhere will do.
The time you have for a trip is limited.
If you are coming to Japan for its onsen and saunas, I want you to experience not a place you bathe in once and forget, but one you will remember for years, one you would travel all that way to visit again if you could.
That is why I made this magazine.
I love onsen and saunas, and I have visited a great many places on my travels across Japan.
Some I visited because they were famous. Some were recommended to me. Some I simply came across along the way.
I have personally been to every place featured here, bathed in its onsen and experienced its sauna.
But not every place I visited made it into this magazine.
Far more places were left out than were included.
Japan has plenty of good onsen and plenty of good saunas.
Even so,
“I want to come back here once more before I die”
places that make you feel that from the heart are few and far between.
The moment you sink into the onsen. The moment you step out of the sauna and the breeze wraps around you. The mountains or the sea spread out before you. The feel of the water. The quiet. The time spent in that particular place.
There are experiences that somehow stay in your body long after you have left.
There are places that come back to you out of nowhere, even years later.
Those are the only places I have kept in this magazine.
None were chosen on the strength of photos or reputation alone.
I chose places I actually went to and experienced with my own body, and still found myself thinking, “I want to go back.”
Not covering everything, but deciding what to keep.
That is what mattered most to me in making this magazine.
This is not simply a collection of popular onsen and famous saunas.
Views you can see only here. Onsen you can feel only here. Experiences that come into being only when the land, the surroundings and the place itself all come together.
If you want to spend your limited time in Japan on places truly worth the journey,
if you want to savor onsen and saunas so deeply that they become the reason for your trip,
this magazine is for you.
As you turn the pages, I hope you find places that make you think, “I want to go all the way there.”
And when you actually visit, I would be glad if you could feel for yourself what photos and words could never fully convey.
Some years after your journey ends,
“I’m so glad I went there”
I hope that an experience you remember like that will be born from the pages of this magazine.
Contents
- Yulax · Kumamoto
- Kanigoten · Saga
- Saga no Yudokoro KOMOREBI · Saga
- Mifuneyama Rakuen Hotel · SagaFree in the preview
- OND SAUNA · Saga
- OND HOTEL · Saga
- Wellbe Fukuoka · Fukuoka
- Iyo No Tojiba Kisuke no Yu · Ehime
- Shimanami Onsen Kisuke no Yu · Ehime
- Golden Time Takamatsu · Kagawa
- Takamatsu Pokapoka Onsen · Kagawa
- Naruto Natural Hot Spring Aratae no Yu · Tokushima
- Tosa Mochizuki Onsen Himewako no Yu · Kochi
- Hotel Kawakyu, Nanki Shirahama Onsen · Wakayama