Iwai Onsen

Iwai is among the oldest hot springs in the San'in region, with about thirteen hundred years of recorded use, and it has kept a custom that exists nowhere else: yukamuri. You sit in the bath with a folded towel on your head, take a long-handled wooden ladle, and pour water over your own head while singing the yukamuri song. It began, by tradition, because the water was too hot to enter and pouring it over the head was the way to acclimatise.

The village is small — a handful of inns along a stream in a valley behind the Iwami coast — and the public bathhouse, Yukamuri Onsen, is the practical way to try it. It costs ¥400, is open from six in the morning until ten at night, and does not close. Ladles are provided. Whether you sing is between you and the other bathers.