Sakaemachi Onsen

Sakaemachi Onsen, Amagasaki, Hyogo An old-school sento for ¥550 on an old shopping street. The street itself looked pretty deserted at 7 p.m., but the sento was open, and there were other people bathing inside too. At the entrance there are shoe lockers and an umbrella stand, and from there two doors lead straight into the women’s and men’s sections, directly into the changing room. At the front of the changing room, between the areas, there is a reception counter where you pay. The changing room is spacious, with sofas, a TV, and a little fridge with drinks. Along the walls there are many washing spots with hot and cold water taps and a wall-mounted shower with no adjustment for position or temperature, you can only turn it on and off, and the water runs at about 40 degrees, so you are expected to wash the old-fashioned way, from buckets, though there were not quite enough of them. Inside it is spacious, the ceilings are high, it is easy to breathe, and the lighting is bright. The tiles are all clean, apparently they were cleaned recently, although there are traces of repairs. Indoor area: - Shallow sitting bath, 40.5℃ - Deeper bath with a bench, 41℃ - Deep bath, waist-deep for me, 42℃, with benches and a couple of constantly running jets - Two jet baths in a row with slightly different lower-back massage settings, activated by a button for 5 minutes. 41℃ - Jet bath, a "human washing machine", activated by a separate button for 5 minutes, 41℃ - Possibly an electric bath, it was occupied the whole time, so I did not get in - Steam sauna for 2-3 people, around 50℃ at chest level - Cold bath, 27℃ The outdoor bath is closed and not in use. The place’s gimmick is the jet bath, the "ultrasonic human washing machine": it is a jet bath where the water jets hit the walls not at a right angle, but along the walls, making the water in the bath swirl quite actively counterclockwise. The ultrasonic part in the name seems to be just for show. If you hold onto the edges with your hands, it is basically an ordinary jet bath, but if you let go, you start to be slowly spun by a churning whirlpool and rotated around your own axis, just like in a washing machine. Still, you need to adjust yourself with your hands to stay in the center of the bath, because after a couple of turns it starts spinning faster and you really begin to bump different parts of your body against the walls, the jet nozzles, and the step at the bottom of the bath, which is already somewhat dangerous. It is said that the facility participates in Toreco with a digital card, but the old man at the counter did not seem to know about it, and I did not see any QR code for scanning either. Overall the place is neat and lively, although it is clearly old and tired, though it seems they deliberately maintain the style of an earlier Showa era. But the surrounding shopping street leaves a truly depressing impression. 2026-09-23