Category: General


  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • What is onsenpunk?

    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…