Make bath time a ritual just like the Japanese
From outdoor tubs to sit-up baths, jump in for a sumptuous soak, says Laura Freeman
HOW far would you travel for the perfect bath? I flew 6,000 miles from London to Atami in the mountains beyond Tokyo.
Here, hot springs hiss and steam from the earth, forming natural pools. In winter, snow monkeys soak in the springs, sinking up to their shoulders as icicles form on their beards.
At the Watei Kazekomichi spa in Atami there are onsen — hot spring baths — made not for monkeys, but for weary travellers. A bath in the mineralrich waters promises to cure gout, arthritis and all manner of aches, pains, blisters and mosquito bites. Encrustations of salts form around the taps that carry the water.
Each room has a balcony with a private stone bath fed from volcanic springs. The water is hot as you can stand it, but a breeze keeps your head cool. I stayed in the water until my skin was as crinkled as a pickled plum. On my futon that night, I slept like a baby.
Back in Britain, trying to steam out the jetlag in the tub in my small, windowless bathroom, I thought about how we neglect these important rooms. We create functional spaces for hurried scrubs, with just a token tea-light by the taps.
Even the smallest flats in Japan have ‘deep-soaking’ tubs, shorter, but deeper than han our standard lounging ging baths. The water stays ays hot for longer —becausese less heat is lost over the smaller water surface area — and you can sit upright.
Basu sells Japanese-style deep-soaking tubs that can be ordered with jets and whirlpools — but not snow monkeys (from £575, basu tub.co.uk).
As for accessories, you’ll need a dipper made with Japanese Hinoki cypress for pouring water down your back (£ 65, nativeandco.
com), and an Imabari waffle cotton towel ( from £ 29, urbanara.co.uk).
Soft brushes made from windmill palms by the Japanese craftsman Takada Tawashi look beautiful hanging by the bath (from £55, at moukimou.com).
The Japanese turn bathing into a ceremony. The native Shinto religion places huge importance on washing as a way of purifying the spirit and mind.
Before bathing, a shower is taken to wash off the dirt of the day. After the bath, you dress in a summerweight kimono while you dry. Try Toast for simple, pretty gowns (£125, toa.st/
uk).uk) Some bathing enthusiasts will float a buoyant cypress box in the bath holding a flask of the rice wine sake.
Copperfield Baths, in Kent, sells a fabulous round Japanese bathtub (£4,200, copperfieldbaths.co.uk). BuT
if you incline more to the cottage look, luxuriate in a Canterbury Mini bath with clawed feet (from £1,445 in the sale, firedearth.com).
Old-Fashioned Bathrooms has gleaming coppercoated baths (from £2,573) and deep cast-iron tubs (from £890, oldfashioned bathrooms. co.uk).
The Albion Bath Company offers cast-stone baths that can be customised with your choice of colours (from £1,898 albionbathco.com). Paint the outside an indigo blue like the sea in Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai’s famous print The Great Wave.
For something very traditional,t Gates RailingsR Direct, in Stourbridge, West Midlands, still makes tinti baths. IfI you have a woodburningbur stove in the house,hous you could fill one of thesethe with hot water from thet kettle and keep toasty by the fire. But if that’s too much like playing at a Victorian parlour maid, they make excellent table-top baths for dog-washing. The baths are made by factory foreman and master sheetmetal worker Steve Siviter and can be collected from the factory from £55, gates railingsdirect. co. uk, or ordered online at mower
magic.co.uk from £85. For the true onsen experience, your bath should be outdoors. Derbyshire company Forestflame makes round cedar-wood barrel tubs heated by woodburning stoves.
The baths don’t need chlorine as many hot tubs and Jacuzzis do and the water can be emptied over flowerbeds and lawns without killing your plants with nasty bleaches or chemicals (from £5,250 plus delivery, forestflame.co.uk).
For those of us without gardens, it’s a question of making do with a sprinkle of mountain salts under the tap — and daydreams about mountain onsen and snow monkeys.