I like to bathe in public. this inclination has so far failed to attract much attention because I live in Japan, where hot-spring hopping is a national obsession and the remarkable benefits of bathing ...

From the stately changing room of a nearly 60-year-old sento public bath in a residential area of Edogawa Ward, Tokyo, you can enjoy a majestic view of Mt. Fuji. But only through a painting. With ...

A public bath house in Tokyo is offering classes to its naked customers, hoping the experience of learning in the nude will not only be liberating but also bring back a young audience to the dying ...

Does the thought of getting nude with other people in your local sento, or public bath, raise a smile or make you cringe? Whatever your personal take, the process of bathing in true Japanese form has ...

There are two types of bath houses in Japan: onsen and sento. While there are obvious similarities between the two – they're both communal hot-water baths and visitors must adhere to certain rules of ...

Onsen (hot springs) have been part of Japanese culture for centuries, but they’ve been seriously surging in popularity over the past 20 years. At the same time that there’s an onsen renaissance going ...

TOKYO — “A foreigner holding a washbowl in a bathhouse is so cool!” was the reaction to one of the promotional posters on display in a Tokyo bathhouse. “You think public bathhouses are weird?!” was ...

STEP from the fraying lobby into the tiled interior of Akebono-Yu, Tokyo’s oldest sento, or public bath-house, and there is an almost churchlike silence, interrupted only by the tinkle of spring water ...