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Onsenpunk does not get to be more onsen and more punk than Tamagawa onsen (玉川温泉) in Akita prefecture. A fitting topic to restart this blog in the new year. Tamagawa onsen is officially the most acidic hot spring in Japan that is still safe to use. The water is transparent and has a slightly greenish…
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Hot spring and public bath culture in Japan is highly developed and has thousands of years of history. Some of its aspects can be quite sophisticated and not as easy to understand, especially first few times you go to onsen. At the end of the day though and in the true spirit of onsenpunk, if…
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For someone like me who spent the first three decades of their life mainly in big cities getting away from urban locations into forests or mountains could never be described as getting “back” to nature, but rather “forward to” or “towards” it. I believe I first encountered this thinking in Nietzsche who was very skeptical…
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Taking a bath in the hot spring creates a moment when you can both observe the place around you and also become the main actor in it–after all the bath is built there for someone to enter it. The hot spring and its minerals literally become part of you, same as the tiny parts of…
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Since I came to Japan first time in 2009 I have visited hundreds of hot springs. I tried to keep track of the exact number, but eventually I lost count. Among them, there are a few that I keep returning to again and again, physically and in my memories. ZAO ONSEN An old hot spring…
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Rainy weather in these two days reminded me of a trip we made to the hot springs in Myoko Kogen (妙高高原) area in the August of 2020. We were returning to Tokyo from a place near Sea of Japan where we spent about a week. It was very hot as always in August, but Tsubame…
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As I wrote in the first post here, I believe onsenpunk have existed for long time and we just need to find out way to it. I was lucky to get the introduction to Japanese hot springs from my host family when I first came to Japan in 2009. But I think my real initiation…
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Onsen is a Japanese word for hot springs. Punk is a philosophy that puts freedom and egalitarian mindset at its core represented externally through distinctive visual style and adherence to specific set of social practices. Combined together it is a way of life built around respect to nature and people, a search for purification for…