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Shibu Onsen — photo: 663highland · CC BY 2.5 · Wikimedia Commons

The yukata, and everything else waiting in a ryokan room

The attendant shows you in, pours a cup of tea, points at a folded pile of cotton on the shelf and leaves. You are standing on tatami in your socks, the room has no bed and no chairs with legs, and you are fairly sure the cotton is meant to be worn — but where, and how far from the room, nobody said.

The pile on the shelf

What you have been given is usually three or four things. The long cotton robe is the 浴衣 (yukata). The narrow strip of cloth folded beside it is the sash, 帯 (obi). In the cooler months there is also a padded jacket that goes over the top, called 丹前 (tanzen) or 半纏 (hanten) depending on the region and the length, or a lighter 羽織 (haori). Some inns add a pair of split-toe socks, 足袋 (tabi), so you can wear them with sandals.

Next to that is a thin cotton hand towel, the 手ぬぐい (tenugui), often printed with the inn's name, and a larger bath towel. These are the towels for the bath: the small one is the one you carry in and rest on your head, the large one stays in the changing room. The rules for the bath itself are on how an onsen stay works.

Check the size before you need it

Ryokan yukata come in fixed lengths, and the one laid out for you was chosen by a guess. The size is often printed or stitched on the collar or on a label inside, as 小 (shō, small), 中 (chū, medium), 大 (dai, large) and sometimes 特大 (tokudai, extra large). Some inns colour-code the sizes instead of labelling them.

The right length ends around the ankle. If it stops at mid-shin, it will fall open every time you sit down on the floor, which you will do at dinner. Ask at the front desk for a bigger one — say ōkii saizu arimasu ka — as soon as you arrive, not at 18:00 when dinner is waiting.

At many inns, especially in hot spring towns that attract couples, women are invited to choose a coloured yukata, 色浴衣 (iro-yukata), from a rack near the entrance instead of wearing the plain house pattern. It is usually free for overnight guests.

Left over right, always

You wear underwear beneath it. Put the yukata on like a coat, pull the right-hand panel across your body first, then bring the left-hand panel over the top of it. Looking down, the edge on top runs from your left shoulder down to your right hip. The simplest check: your right hand should be able to slip inside the fold at your chest.

The other way round — right over left — is how a body is dressed for a funeral in Japan. It is the single mistake that staff will quietly correct, and it is worth getting right before you walk into the dining room.

Wrap the obi two or three times and tie it. Men tie it low, around the hips, with the knot at the side or the back. Women tie it higher, at the waist, and a simple bow at the front or side is fine. What matters is that it keeps the front closed when you sit on the floor. The jacket goes on over the obi.

Where the yukata can go

Inside the inn it goes almost everywhere: to the baths, down the corridors, to the dining room, to the souvenir shop in the lobby and to bed. Arriving at dinner in the clothes you travelled in is not wrong, but you will be the only one.

The exceptions are at large, hotel-style onsen resorts. Some of them ask guests not to wear the yukata in the lobby, the breakfast buffet or the bar, and say so on a small sign or in the room folder, usually with the words 浴衣でのご利用はご遠慮ください — "please refrain from using this area in yukata". The smaller and older the inn, the less likely you are to see it.

Outside the inn, it depends entirely on the town.

The towns built for walking in one

The yukata stroll grew up in towns where the best baths are not inside the inns but out on the street: public bathhouses, 外湯 (sotoyu), that guests walk between in the evening. In these towns the inn lends you 下駄 (geta), wooden sandals kept in a rack by the door, and the sound of them on the paving after dark is what the towns are known for.

• Kinosaki Onsen in Hyōgo has seven public baths along a willow-lined canal, and most inns give their guests a pass to use them. Its water comes out between 37°C and 83°C and is chloride water.
• Shibu Onsen in Nagano has nine small public baths on one narrow street. Only guests of the town's inns get the key that opens them, so after dark the street belongs to people in yukata. It is also a chloride spring.
• Nozawa Onsen, also in Nagano, keeps thirteen free public baths in wooden huts around the village. Its sulfur water emerges at anything from 42°C to 90°C, and the baths are hot enough that the local rule is to add cold water only if nobody already in the tub objects.
• Ginzan Onsen in Yamagata is a single street of wooden inns along a river, lit by gas lamps at night. Its springs run from 44°C to 65°C and carry both chloride and sulfur.

Of the 1,538 onsen towns in this guide, most are not like this. Many are a road with a few inns spread along it, where there is nowhere to walk to and a yukata outdoors would only be cold. If the inn does not have geta at the door, take that as the answer.

Walking in geta, and staying warm

Geta are raised on two wooden teeth and the strap goes between the big toe and the second toe. They take a few minutes to get used to. Take small steps, keep your weight slightly forward, and watch for wet stone steps outside the baths, which are slippery in wooden soles. Wearing tabi socks with them is normal and helps if the strap rubs.

A cotton yukata is thin. In Shibu or Nozawa between December and March, the walk between baths is done in snow, and the tanzen jacket over the top is not optional. Plenty of people simply wear a coat over the yukata.

The rest of the room

A ryokan room is laid out for sitting on the floor, and most of what is in it has a fixed purpose.

• Slippers stop at the tatami. You wear the inn's slippers in the corridors, then step out of them onto the mats barefoot or in socks. If there is a separate pair inside the toilet, they are for the toilet only; walking back into the room in them is a classic mistake.
• The alcove is not a shelf. The raised recess in one wall with a scroll or flowers is the 床の間 (tokonoma). Do not put your suitcase, clothes or anything else in it.
• The window corner is for sitting. Many rooms have a small area by the window with two chairs and a table, the 広縁 (hiroen). It is the one place in the room with proper chairs, and it is where people sit with a drink after the bath.
• The tea set is for you. A thermos of hot water, a teapot and green tea are on the low table, with a small local sweet, お茶菓子 (ochagashi), often a steamed bun from a shop in town.
• The fridge may charge by itself. In some older hotels, drinks in a full mini fridge are billed by a sensor the moment you lift them out.

The bed appears while you are at dinner

There is no bed because the 布団 (futon) lives in the cupboard. At most traditional inns, staff come in while you are eating dinner, move the low table to the side and lay out the futon. If you eat in your room, they wait until you have finished and come back. Leave anything private packed away. At cheaper inns you may lay it out yourself.

You sleep in the yukata. It will come loose during the night, and that is normal. Some inns lay a second, fresh yukata on the futon so you are not sleeping in the one you wore to the bath.

What stays and what goes home with you

At check-out, fold the yukata, obi and jacket loosely and leave them on the futon or the table. They belong to the inn, and taking one is simply taking something that is not yours. If you want one, the lobby shop almost always sells them.

The tenugui is different. At many inns the printed hand towel, along with the toothbrush and the small disposable items in the bathroom, is meant for you to keep, and it is the traditional souvenir of the stay. If you are not sure, it is fine to ask: kore, moratte ii desu ka, "may I take this?"

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