Asagama-no-yu Hot Spring

Asagama-no-yu is a soak-only bath: no shower, no dryer, just a single tub of hot-spring water piped straight from the source. Nothing is done to cool it, so it runs quite hot, and most visitors run the cold tap for a while before settling in. The water is clear with a faint yellow-green tint and a few flecks of mineral flake drifting through it. It's one of Nozawa Onsen's thirteen soto-yu (外湯), small communal bathhouses kept open not by any company but by the local yu-nakama (湯仲間), a residents' association. Inside sits a small shrine to the Juni Shinsho (十二神将), the Twelve Guardian Generals, with an offering box for a donation instead of a fixed entry fee. The bath is named for Asagama, the well-known hot-spring pool up the lane where locals still cook eggs and vegetables; that pool itself isn't for bathing, but this plain building next to it is where the same water actually gets used.