Nozawa Onsen — photo: Hideyuki KAMON · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Onsen etiquette: the rules the usual lists leave out
You have read the list. Wash before you get in, no swimsuit, towel on your head, keep your voice down. Then you walk into the bath and there is a cold-water tap next to a pool that is far too hot, a stone floor as slippery as soap, and a sign you cannot read. The usual lists stop at the door of the bath. This page starts there.
The short version you already know
For completeness, the rules every guide gives, in the order you meet them:
- Shoes off at the entrance, into a locker or a shelf. Slippers stop at the edge of the changing room.
- Clothes into a basket or locker in the 脱衣所 (datsuijo), the changing room. You go in with nothing on and a small towel in your hand.
- Sit on a stool at a shower and wash properly. Rinse every trace of soap off.
- Long hair tied up. The small towel stays out of the water.
- No phones or cameras in the bath area. No swimming, no diving, no loud talk.
If that is all new to you, read how an onsen stay actually works first. The rest of this page is what comes after.
Pour water over yourself before you step in
Even after you have showered, people scoop water from the bath with a bucket and pour it over themselves before getting in. This is called かけ湯 (kakeyu). It rinses you once more, and it lets your body feel the temperature before your whole body is in it. Start at your feet and work up. Some baths have a small separate trough for this beside the main pool; use that if it is there.
When you have finished with a bucket or stool, rinse it and put it back where it was, usually upside down or stacked at the shower. Leaving your stool wet and soapy for the next person is the thing regulars notice.
The water is hotter than you expect, and that is the point
Our database holds 1,538 onsen towns. For 1,167 of them we have a source temperature on record, and 573 of those come out of the ground at 42 °C or more. 218 are above 60 °C and 78 are above 80 °C. Most baths cool that water down before it reaches you, but a pool fed straight from a hot source can sit at 44 or 45 °C.
That is where the cold tap comes in. In many baths there is a tap of plain water over the pool. Turning it on full to make the pool comfortable for you makes it wrong for the regulars who came for the heat, and in a bath that advertises its water as unaltered it dilutes the thing people paid for. The rule of thumb:
- If there is a sign saying 加水しないでください ("please do not add water"), do not touch the tap.
- If there is no sign and other people are in the pool, ask with a gesture before you turn it on, and turn it off when you get out.
- If the pool is simply too hot for you, choose another pool. Most baths have more than one, and the outdoor one is often cooler.
In Kusatsu, whose sources run from 44.9 to 94.5 °C with about 32,300 litres a minute, the town cools some of its water by stirring it with long wooden boards instead of adding cold water. That is how seriously people take it.
Get in slowly and get out before you feel light-headed. Several short soaks with breaks between them are normal. Nobody is timing you.
Slippery floors are a feature of the water
Some onsen water feels smooth and slippery on the skin, and the stone and tile around the pool become slippery too. It is usually alkaline water. Of the 596 onsen towns for which we have a pH on record, 215 reach pH 8.5 or above, and 24 reach pH 10 or above. Hakuba Happo in Nagano is recorded at pH 11.5, the highest in our database.
So: walk, do not hurry, hold the rail on the steps into the pool, and be most careful on wet wooden floors outside. Falls in the bath are a real risk for older bathers in particular, and they are the reason for the "no running" signs.
Acidic and sulfur water: keep it away from your eyes
At the other end, 26 of those 596 towns are more acidic than pH 3, and 11 more acidic than pH 2. Kusatsu is recorded at pH 1.0 to 2.2. Our records list 47 towns with an acidic spring and 311 with a sulfur spring.
- Do not splash the water on your face or rub your eyes with wet hands. It stings.
- Take off silver and some other metal jewellery before you get in. Sulfur and acid can blacken it.
- Leave your glasses in the changing room if the frames have metal parts you care about.
Whether to rinse the water off afterwards is a matter of taste. Some people like to leave the minerals on their skin. If your skin feels tight or itchy after an acidic bath, rinse with plain water at the shower.
Dry off before you go back into the changing room
This is the one almost every foreign visitor gets wrong, and it is missing from most lists. When you come out of the bath, wipe yourself down with your small towel while you are still in the wet area, then walk into the changing room. The changing room floor is often 畳 (tatami) or a woven mat, and people walk on it in bare feet and put their clothes down on it. Dripping across it is the equivalent of walking into someone's living room in wet shoes.
Wring the small towel out hard. It dries you well enough, which is why it is the only towel you take in.
Village baths with no staff
Some onsen towns have small communal bathhouses run by and for the people who live there, called 共同浴場 (kyōdō yokujō) or 外湯 (sotoyu). Nozawa, in the snow country of Nagano, is known for them; its sulfur water runs from 42 to 90 °C. Shibu and Kinosaki have their own rounds of public baths as well, though the arrangements differ from town to town.
These are not attractions. They are cleaned by the neighbourhood, often by a rota of residents, and some are open to visitors only by courtesy or only to guests of local inns with a key. The etiquette is stricter because there is nobody to explain it.
- If there is a box for money, pay what the sign asks, even if nobody is watching.
- Say a quiet こんにちは (konnichiwa) when you enter and お先に (osaki ni), roughly "excuse me for going first", when you leave.
- These baths are often very small and very hot, sometimes a single pool with no tap. Do not add cold water unless a local tells you to.
- There may be no soap and no towels. Bring your own, and carry your belongings in a small bag.
- If a sign says residents only, 地元専用 (jimoto sen'yō), it means it.
Signs worth recognising
- 男 men, 女 women. Check every time you go in. Many inns swap the two sides once a day, often overnight, so that guests can try both. The pool you used last night may be the other side this morning.
- 入れ替え (irekae) is that swap. The time is usually posted at the entrance.
- 混浴 (kon'yoku) is a mixed bath. Some allow a bathing wrap for women, 湯あみ着 (yuamigi); others allow a towel to be wrapped round the body there only. Follow the sign at that bath, not a rule from somewhere else.
- 飲泉 (insen) marks a spot where the water is meant for drinking. Water from any other tap or pool is not for drinking.
- 清掃中 (seisō-chū) means cleaning in progress. Come back later.
Things not to do
Do not put your head under the water or wash your hair in the pool.
Do not sit on the edge of the pool with your legs in for a long time, blocking the steps.
Do not bring a drink into the bath area. Drink water before and after instead; you lose more than you think in a hot bath.
Do not bathe straight after a large meal or after drinking alcohol. Wait an hour.
Do not stare, and do not worry that anyone is staring at you. They are not.
Do not photograph the bath, even when it is empty. Someone may walk in.
For the basics, see how an onsen stay actually works. For what the water types mean, see reading the water sign. If you have a tattoo, read going to an onsen with tattoos. If you would rather bathe without other people, see baths you can have to yourself.