![]() Omuraya Minshuku (a minshuku is an unpretentious guesthouse) keeps it simple and spare. In trendier, more populous parts of Japan, onsen - which can mean either a single hot springs or a village or town dotted with them - can be fancy and pricey, with fabulously exclusive traditional wood, paper and thatch ryokan inns or multi-storied modern takes on the concept with guests arriving by the busload. Do people up in their rooms watch us from their wide windows like we’re the best show in town? Or are we all just part of the riverscape, an every night occurrence, a hot springs where people have bathed naked for thousands of years? It's not much more than a stretch of blacktop lined with inns and guesthouses overlooking the water. I'm in Kawayu, a village on the Kii Peninsula in southern Honshu - four and a half hours from Kyoto, or a day's train ride and a distinct change of pace from Tokyo. These are pale and short and, once wet, render them not naked but nude, every curve and crevice enunciated by the brilliant moonlight, as fleshy and phosphorescent as a group of Cézanne bathers. That's when the women come in, across the steaming water from us, wearing their modesty robes. ![]() The trio follow my lead, and there we are ranged along the water, naked as jaybirds. Then, I take a breather, sitting on the rim of the bath. The trio of Japanese guys along the way don't seem to mind the heat, so I determine to tough it out. Photo credit: Will Aitkenįeet in to the ankles - long pause - then I hunker down in the waist-deep water and feel my internal thermometer shoot volcanic. Sennin Buro means thousand-people bath, but this cool November night we seem to be more like 20 or 30. A toe in the water, steam rising off it, suggests I should go in gradually, for this is the Sennin Buro Bath, a spacious sectioned-off part of the river fed by hot springs. It hangs over the mountain that looms over the Oto River. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.An ancient pilgrimage route takes in Shinto shrines and millennia-old hot springs. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click "Continue without accepting" to reject, or "Customize Cookies" to make more detailed advertising choices, or learn more. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Cookies store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. Your choice applies to using first-party and third-party advertising cookies on this service. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences, and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice.
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