All this awaits you on a short train ride from Tokyo.

With more and more overseas travellers seeking out day trips to the Japanese countryside while visiting big cities, it’s becoming harder to find hidden hot springs that aren’t crowded with tourists. Over in Tokyo’s neighbouring Saitama Prefecture, though, there’s an onsen that’s still under the radar for most tourists, but with everything it has to offer, it won’t remain a secret for long.

Called Ofuro Cafe Hakuju no Yu, this onsen facility boasts one of the highest concentrations of hot spring water in the Kanto region. As suggested by the name, the focus is on two things — the hot spring itself and the attached cafe, where you can nourish yourself with fermented foods after nourishing your skin with the healing waters.

▼ The highlight of the cafe is the “soy sauce bar” where you can try 99 types of soy sauce.

Restaurant Tawaraya is the name of the cafe, and it’s where you can enjoy meals containing koji, a beneficial mould that’s added to steamed grains such as rice, barley, and soybeans. All diners have free access to the artisanal soy sauce bar, and the reason why 99 types are offered is because it ties in with the name of the hot spring — Hakuju no yu. In Japan, “hakuju” is the word used to mean “99 years of age“, due to the fact that if you subtract one from one hundred you get 99, and if you subtract the kanji for one (“一”) that appears at the top of the kanji for 100 (“百’), you get “白”, which is read as “haku”. “Ju” is used to mean both “congratulations” and “longevity”, and if you want to delve into the wordplay even further, the word “yu” can mean both “hot water” and “oil”, with “shoyu” being the Japanese word for soy sauce.

 

The hot spring on site looks a bit like soy sauce too, although the shade is due to naturally occurring minerals in the water, which gushes out from the paleozoic layer 750 metres (0.5 miles) underground.

The entire facility underwent renovations in June, with a number of new areas added, including a chill-out space where you can read to your heart’s content inside tubs resembling huge soy sauce fermentation barrels.

Plus, the store sells small 100-millilitre (3.4-ounce) bottles of all the soy sauces from the bar in the cafe so they won’t take up a lot of room in your suitcase if you want to take them home as souvenirs.

If you love soy sauce as much as you love hot springs, this is definitely a site to put on your itinerary. And you can always continue your love for the fermented sauce by slathering your hands with this new soy sauce hand cream!

Site information
Ofuro Cafe Hakuju no Yu / おふろcafé 白寿の湯
Address: Saitama-ken, Kodama-gun, Kamikawa-cho, Watase 337-1
埼玉県児玉郡神川町渡瀬337-1
Open: 10:00 a.m.-11:00 p.m. (last entry 10:30 p.m.)
Website

Source, images: Press release
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