00:00:00 John Daub: This is the Only Japan Go channel and I'm going to be showing you Tokyo's newest onsen. Yeah, you know Tokyo has a lot of sentō (public bathhouses) but they also have onsen (hot springs). You don't have to go all the way out to the countryside to experience the onsen. You can do it right here in Tokyo. The most famous one is in Odaiba. It's called Monogatari and it's the one that most tourists go to. But I want to introduce you to one that just opened. Well, it's opening the day after tomorrow and they've given me a chance to get a sneak peek of it. I'm really excited about it. It's right here in this neighborhood near Hasunuma Station in Shinagawa.

00:00:36 John Daub: You can see it's brand new and they've made it out of wood. This is what I really like about it. This is real wood and the windows are all stained glass. And there's a story behind it and I'm going to explain that to you. Now, most of the onsen in Tokyo are a little bit different. Most sentō or bathhouses in Tokyo are kind of old. They look like throwbacks from the 1940s and 1950s. They haven't changed much. And I've been making a series about the sentō, the bathhouses here in Tokyo. This is the last one I'm filming.

00:01:16 John Daub: Now, this one is unique because they've remodeled it in an effort to try to bring more people to go to the baths. And this one hasn't been opened yet. It will the day after tomorrow but we're going to take a look inside. I hope you're ready for this. So the price is a very modest 460 yen or about $4 to enter in here. Once again, it's not open yet to the public. It's open to me. And I'm taking you in there. Leave your shoes at the door right there. And there's lockers to put them in right here. Everything's made out of wood. Let's enter.

00:02:01 John Daub: Oh, hello! Hello! Welcome! I just discovered this before I came in here. This is a real thing? Yeah, this is a CG. It's a digital sign. There's a pond under the floor and the koi are swimming. Yeah, this is an LCD monitor and it's using computer graphics. And it's in the floor of the entrance, the lobby of this onsen. It's really cool. I was looking at this for like 10 minutes going, oh, look at the koi. But it's not real! It's a computer monitor. Very cool. It's amazing. The sound is natural.

00:02:56 John Daub: So this is the owner. It's not open yet, right?

00:03:04 Kondo-san: Yes, it is. The day after tomorrow, December 16th. It's open on the 16th.

00:03:14 John Daub: Oh, wow. It's really nice. It's all made of wood, right?

00:03:17 Kondo-san: Yes.

00:03:18 John Daub: I love this because everything is made out of wood. This is kind of rare in sentō. They've all been made out of plastic or metal or cement. This is wood. And I like the touch of the stained glass windows. This comes back to the Taishō era (1912-1926), right?

00:03:34 Kondo-san: Yes, Taishō era.

00:03:35 John Daub: There was the Meiji Restoration, then Taishō, then Shōwa, and now this is Heisei. But Heisei might be over in two years, right?

00:03:46 Kondo-san: Yes, time slip.

00:03:48 John Daub: Time slip. This is like we've gone back in time. What I like about this is not just the wood and the stained glass windows, but there's a lobby with an entrance to Mt. Fuji. Yes, you can take pictures inside, but you can do it here. That's really, really cool.

00:04:11 John Daub: All right. So this is, it's a men's and women's bath, right?

00:04:15 Kondo-san: That's right. But today it's women's.

00:04:20 John Daub: So we're going to go inside and we're going to take a look at the women's bath. Now they're actually having tours and people are coming in to take a look at this place because it's brand new.

00:04:27 John Daub: Sensei, that smell.

00:04:34 Kondo-san: Yes, there's a lot of wood smell. It's a Japanese wood smell.

00:04:46 John Daub: Yeah, there's the smell of wood. I love these lights. The lights are so beautiful. It's like a Taishō era, like a hundred years ago, they have that kind of style of lights. I really love that. It's a throwback. Everything is so clean. And what you can see with the lockers is they've taken a lot of attention to the details. This is made out of like bronze, I think. And the lockers are made out of wood, which is really, I like that style. It's very natural. And that's important, I think. When you want to go to an onsen, you want it to be natural.

00:05:24 John Daub: The walls are all made of wood.

00:05:26 Kondo-san: That's right. It's a Japanese art.

00:05:27 John Daub: So the walls are just painted white. It's just plain. And I like that style too. You don't even put up posters here, right?

00:05:38 Kondo-san: No, we don't put up posters. Just like this.

00:05:40 John Daub: Yeah, I like that. That's nice. Who came up with this idea?

00:05:46 Kondo-san: Me and a designer.

00:05:48 John Daub: Why did you change it?

00:05:51 Kondo-san: Japanese culture has been around since the Edo period. Taishō era is a mix of the new and the old. It's a new era, so we're trying to make Taishō era a romantic time.

00:06:08 John Daub: Oh yeah, I like that. It was a way to protect the Edo period. And the Edo period is well known, the Meiji era. But the Taishō era is something that's really unique. It's like a throwback to the olden days, like the real olden days. And that makes this almost like a theme park.

00:06:27 Kondo-san: It's like a theme park. Just a little bit.

00:06:29 John Daub: Odaiba has a story, right? There's an onsen in Odaiba called Monogatari. That's a theme park. That's like the Edo era, right?

00:06:38 Kondo-san: The Taishō era.

00:06:43 John Daub: The Taishō era bathhouse. Oh, I'm loving this. Look at the inside. Now, outside I showed you Mount Fuji, but inside here they've done it differently. Right now they have a lot of people checking the water, and they're getting ready for the opening. But already you can hear my voice echoing.

00:07:01 John Daub: So this is spring. Summer. Fall. Shōgatsu (New Year). And from now on winter. Winter! And that's where we are right now. We're in the middle of winter. Technically still fall, but we'll do winter. Nobody has used this at all yet. This is all brand new. It has that new wood smell. I was gonna say new car. But the art on it is beautiful.

00:07:36 John Daub: Wow! Who made this?

00:07:39 Kondo-san: My mom made it for me! She signed here.

00:08:08 John Daub: The lighting, again up there you can see the water in the men's bath sparkling up under the ceiling reflecting up there. Yeah, it's beautiful. This is 460 yen. It's the price of a sentō. But this is a hot spring, right?

00:08:27 Kondo-san: 100% hot spring. 100% hot spring water.

00:08:32 John Daub: Now sentō is a public bath. They're using the water from the tap. Here, they're using the water from the ground. This is naturally heated onsen water which is bubbling now. It's coming right from the ground.

00:08:50 John Daub: How deep is it?

00:08:52 Kondo-san: 100 meters.

00:08:53 John Daub: 100 meters deep. This, I think a lot of you might know before, it's sort of like Dōgo Onsen. Yeah, I made a video about Dōgo Onsen on the main channel a couple of years ago. This is sort of real. It resembles that and it's made as a tribute to Dōgo Onsen which is the ultimate bathhouse. It's nice. And you can see the color of the water is natural. This is the natural color of the water that's coming out of the ground. And it has that smell to it. It doesn't smell like an egg. Yeah, it's smooth. From the minerals in the water, it gives your skin a really soft feeling like a baby's bottom. It's very nice.

00:09:51 John Daub: Now the temperature. How high is it?

00:09:54 Kondo-san: 41 degrees.

00:09:55 John Daub: Ah, 40. It's a very comfortable, right now it's around 40 degrees Celsius. That's a very comfortable temperature. See the water coming out of the faucet right there. You can see the koi in there. Yeah, you can see the koi in there. Some of the carp. It's a very comfortable 41 degrees. I was in Fukushima two weeks ago and the public bath was 51 degrees Celsius. If you know anything about that, that's halfway to boiling. This is a very comfortable 41 degrees Celsius. That's a big difference.

00:10:33 John Daub: What's different?

00:10:34 Kondo-san: The temperature is 41 degrees. This is the hot spring carbonated water.

00:10:42 John Daub: Ah, I see. So these baths are all different. It's gas in it and then this one is just natural water. But I love the fixtures. It's very beautiful. Why is it a lion?

00:11:08 Kondo-san: Because it's a lion.

00:11:13 John Daub: Very cool. And you can see it's coming out. This water color is natural. The minerals are still in it. That's the cool thing. I'm shocked because I think it was about six months ago when I started this project to feature some of the sentō, the bathhouses, the public bathhouses in Tokyo. I had no idea that there was more than one onsen. My image of onsen is not Tokyo but Nagano or Fukushima.

00:11:41 Kondo-san: Yes, but there are also onsen in Tokyo. Especially in Odaiba there are 16 onsen.

00:11:50 John Daub: So, why did you renew it?

00:11:57 Kondo-san: I want to promote the Japanese sentō culture and the Japanese way of bathing.

00:12:08 John Daub: Yeah, this is a really important story. Because the Japanese sentō used to have 2,000 of them maybe 20 or 30 years ago. And they've been decreasing. Now there's only about 600 of them in the city of Tokyo. And this culture of baths is something that I think we want to protect. Because everybody has a bath in their house now. It's changed over the years. So now people being so busy like they are, they don't go to the sentō anymore. They stay at home and take a bath. They don't come to the bathhouse. So, I personally want to protect this culture.

00:12:46 John Daub: This is a big deal to me. If the sentō dies out because there's just not enough customers, I'm going to be really... I just feel like that's not Japan anymore. This culture of going to the bath, to the sentō, to the onsen, to go outside of your house to take a bath publicly is something that really is special. And I'm glad I got a chance to show you around. This hasn't opened yet. It's tomorrow, right?

00:13:12 Kondo-san: Tomorrow.

00:13:12 John Daub: This place is opening the day after tomorrow. And it's so exciting. And I'm kind of happy to be a part of it. See, everything is made out of wood. And these baskets are also the old style. You would put your clothes in there to keep it from getting wet and touching the floor. So it's all very beautiful. It's like an effect from here. When you walk from here and you look up, like, wow. Like you're entering a forest. You're entering a forest. Like you're going into the forest, into the deep, deep areas. And you can see over here this beautiful waterfall. All flowing into the baths. It's very artistic, isn't it? I love this. This is absolutely a gorgeous onsen.

00:14:02 John Daub: That's all I wanted to show you. Just take you around the very brand new onsen. And it's right here. I put a link in the description. Hasunuma Onsen. I put a link in the description so you can find your way here. If you're staying in Tokyo and you're near Shinagawa, this is the place. Like one of those must-stop places. I think definitely check it out. The day after tomorrow. December 16th is the opening. So if you're one of the first people to get in here, you're going to be one of the first times a naked body has been flopping around this wonderful house. I definitely recommend any sentō in Tokyo. But this one, my gosh. I'm so happy that I got a chance to see this story. Look at those beautiful stained glass windows. Taishō era, everybody. Look that up on Google. So you can see history. Awesome.

00:14:50 John Daub: All right. I want to say thank you to everybody. Thank you again for supporting me.

00:14:53 Kondo-san: Thank you very much.

00:14:56 John Daub: You can see the name. Mr. Kondo. Kondo-san. He will be here. Yeah, you can say hi to Kondo-san when you come here to visit. You already have a friend here. Cool. So I'm going to leave the last seconds in the bath. Thank you very much, everybody, for following this episode. And for following the Only Japan Go channel. If you want to see more of these episodes, definitely subscribe. Because then I will annoy you all the time with live streams from Tokyo. That's what I do. Here you go. Enjoy the bath for the last 20 seconds. See you next time, everybody.