Apart from a few hours in the early afternoon, the big pool of hot and mineral-rich water (good for 8 sorts of complaints the placard on the far side says) is open to guests. Although the disclaimer says it does not come from the ground at temperature and with a natural mix of elements, still it could be, since such places can be found around Japan.
Once one is well-scrubbed and ready to enter to soaking pool, thoughts easily follow one after another in the spacious relaxed nakedness of the gently moving water mass, up to one’s neck and letting the heat and minerals do what they do best for one’s skin and state of mind. At this time when the breakfast bar is just opening for service, there are few bathers. So nothing interferes with the elegant sound waves of string quartet music floating on the air and mingling with the steam rising from the surface of the hot but not scalding pool. Every so often to the right of the picture, new heated water is added to make up for new bodies displacing some of the volume and some of the heat escaping into the air. With three years of stringent indoor AND outdoor masking in Japan for Covid-19 set to expire (downgraded to voluntary, person by person decisions; apart from medical facilities and crowded public transport) in less than three weeks on March 13, 2023, this moment in the water, free of cares and free of mask, is especially enjoyable.
In such a pleasant state the parallels to human life begin coming to mind. Bodies come in and bodies go out, as the cycle of mortality also plays out. The hard surfaces and durable infrastructure lives on past many individual lifetimes; it is the inherited part of human society. Besides being a gift from one generation to the next, it forms rigid boundaries that determine or at least guide the behavior as one cycle of people grows to maturity and then soon is gone. The liquid element contained in the boundaries of stone corresponds to the push and pull of fluid social interaction. The breath rising from the hot pool in motion is the voices and respiration of living souls. And the music filling the air is something ever present, but something that not everyone stops to listen to or even to notice, except when it is gone.
Who knew that a rinse and shampoo, followed by the spell of hot water in the giant soaking tub is actually a life lesson told in visual terms for anyone who cares to hear the story.
