Wine Baths and Hot Springs

Wine Bath Salts

When my wife and I visited Yamanashi prefectures, Katsunuma – the city of Grapes and Wine – in Japan last summer we picked up some “ワイン風呂” (Wine Furo) which are basically wine coloured and scented bath salts.

At first I thought they actually had wine in them but when we used them for the first time the other day and on closer inspection of the packaging I realised they are just “Wine Coloured” – i.e. red, and with a “Wine Smell” – although I didn’t notice that much.

Having said that it does have grape juice in it, so it’s almost wine…

For a more authentic wine bath or rather a Hot Spring you can visit the Hakone Kowakien Yunessun Hot Springs Amusement Park and Spa Resort! – That’s quite a mouthful.

This is a few hours outside of Tokyo so I believe you can make a day trip out of it (I’ve never been there), and it has a selection of 25 different “themed” hot spas (or onsen) as they’re usually called in Japan.

Including this one…

Wine Onsen

The wine bottle in the picture is 3.6m tall and the water actually contains red wine – there are regular “performances” during the day when they top up the water with bottles of red wine.

According to their website which is also in English, bathing in wine is a “rejuvenation treatment for the body” and it’s said that Cleopatra used to bathe in wine occasionally.

If wine isn’t to your taste there’s also…

Sake Onsen

The huge wooden sake cask in the background actually drips real sake into the water.

For the tea-totallers there’s also a Green Tea Spa as well as a Coffee Spa – and 20 or so others.
Before this sounds too much like a promotional advert (it’s not, I’ve never been and I don’t work for them, I just found a photo of it in the paper this morning and thought it looked like a lot of fun),
I better stop.

If anyone’s been to it (or a similar wine hot spa), I’d love to hear what it was like.