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.

We often rush through our cleansing routines daily. In the mornings, we take quick showers and head out to face the crazed modern world. If we are lucky, we can wind down at the end of a busy day with ...

Japan unveils 'human washing machine' that cleans, rinses and relaxes you automatically. Japanese designers have unveiled a ...

Their bathrooms draw inspiration from philosophies like kanso (simplicity), shizen (naturalness), and wabi-sabi (embracing ...

Nazuna’s renovated Kyoto-style townhouses have private open-air baths situated in serene Japanese gardens. Sanjusangendo Temple has over a thousand Buddhist statues, some almost a millennium old. At ...

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 at ...

Enjoying the fragrance of a hinoki bathtub is one of the great pleasures of Japanese bathing culture. Now imagine being completely enclosed in a hinoki sauna with the steam drawing out those same ...