Discard both your clothes and daily cares and enjoy a time-honoured bathing ritual with Onsen of Japan. For thousands of years, Japanese hot springs (or onsen) have been revered for their relaxing and healing qualities, and this guidebook highlights 140 of the very best places for tourists to visit around the country. Onsen experiences include super sento (large bathing and relaxation centres), local bathhouses, ultra-chic spas, forest retreats and whole towns dedicated to onsen. The how-to guide will help you navigate the complex etiquette and customs of communal bathing, and easy checklists let you know what each onsen offers and whether tattoos are accepted. One thing is for sure, taking a bath will never be the same again.

Complete with maps and extensive advice, this guide to Japan's hot springs is an invaluable resource for anyone travelling to Japan. Easier to get to than many might imagine, Japan's hidden hot springs are among the few remaining repositories of ancient Japanese ambiance and sensibility. Bucolic and charming, they bear little resemblance to the sterile, clinic-like spas of the West or to the concrete jungles of Japan's best-known onsen towns. The hot springs introduced here belong to another time but they are disappearing fast. Discover them before it's too late through this selective, personalized, and authoritative guide. In this spa guide are unbelievable gems that you would otherwise never, ever, find by yourself. Japanese people are often shocked that you found such a place. It's a very concise collection of the "true and traditional" Japanese onsen ryokan. It is for anyone who seeks a traditional experience of what onsen used to be before modernization set in.

"Japanese Inns and Hot Springs takes readers on a trip around Japan, stopping at 40 of the country's best ryokan. Aiming to make your stay as pleasurable as possible, the book offers tips on travel, easy-to-follow advice on booking a stay, and a helpful etiquette guide geared toward English speakers. -- My Modern Met"

With over 180 color photographs and extensive commentary, this book showcases the beauty of Japanese inn, or ryokan. Featured are both old and new-from inns with a history dating back a thousand years to modern inns with the latest facilities that nonetheless capture the spirit of old Japan. Each of the properties has been handpicked by the authors for their strong design aesthetic, commitment to service and purity of their spring waters. The photographs showcase the resorts at their best and accurately express the unique architectural design of each ryokan. Each chapter begins by introducing the area surrounding the inns and their spas, or onsen, and provides a background of its local history, culture and traditions, as well as the natural environment. The text provides information on the design and development of each ryokan, and descriptions of the owners and their clientele. For those planning a visit to an onsen, this book provides contact details and information on the number of rooms, type of facilities and food, as well as vital information on travel and booking procedures and whether English is spoken. For those fascinated by Japanese culture and design, this book is an absolute delight.

Amid the decline of many of Japan’s rural communities, the hot springs village resort of Kurokawa Onsen is a rare, bright spot. Its two dozen traditional inns, or ryokan, draw nearly a million tourists a year eager to admire its landscape, experience its hospitality, and soak in its hot springs. As a result, these ryokan have enticed village youth to return home to take over successful family businesses and revive the community. Chris McMorran spent nearly two decades researching ryokan in Kurokawa, including a full year of welcoming guests, carrying luggage, scrubbing baths, cleaning rooms, washing dishes, and talking with co-workers and owners about their jobs, relationships, concerns, and aspirations. He presents the realities of ryokan work—celebrated, messy, ignored, exploitative, and liberating—and introduces the people who keep the inns running by making guests feel at home. McMorran explores how Kurokawa’s ryokan mobilize hospitality to create a rural escape from the globalized dimensions of everyday life in urban Japan. Ryokan do this by fusing a romanticized notion of the countryside with an enduring notion of the hospitable woman embodied by nakai, the hired female staff who welcome guests, serve meals, and clean rooms. These women are the face of the ryokan. But hospitality often hides a harsh reality. McMorran found numerous nakai in their 50s, 60s, and 70s who escaped violent or unhappy marriages by finding employment in ryokan. Yet, despite years of experience, nakai remain socially and economically vulnerable. Through this intimate and inventive ethnography of a year in a ryokan, McMorran highlights the importance of both the generational work of ryokan owners and the daily work of their employees, while emphasizing the gulf between them. With its focus on small, family-owned businesses and a mobile, vulnerable workforce, Ryokan makes an invaluable contribution to scholarship on the Japanese workplace. It also will interest students and scholars in geography, mobility studies, and women’s studies and anyone who has ever stayed at a ryokan and is curious about the work that takes place behind the scenes.

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