On a recent concert tour in Japan, I had the chance to visit several thermal baths and to chat with people about the tradition of bathing. I was fascinated by their differences with American spas.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Onsen are baths filled with geothermally heated, mineral-rich water. They’ve long been part of Japanese culture, but foreign ...

TOKYO >> With the Rugby World Cup drawing about 500,000 visitors to Japan, attitudes have been split among public bath operators over whether to accept foreign customers with tattoos. Some facilities ...

Japan has nearly 30,000 hot springs and a culture of public bathing. An Israeli American architect, Yuval Zohar, has developed a passion for it. The architect Yuval Zohar at his favorite hot spring ...

With the Rugby World Cup expected to draw about 500,000 visitors to Japan, attitudes have been split among public bath operators nationwide over whether to accept foreign customers with tattoos. Some ...

It was a cold February day in northern Japan, snow piled high outside the onsen locker room windows as I slipped out of my clothes. Nervously, I stepped into the plumes of steam wafting from the next ...