Secret unstaffed hot spring in Japan will make you feel like you’ve been spirited away

In Japan, June 26 is Rotenburo Day (Open-air Bath Day), due to the double meanings in the syllables that make up the word rotenburo, with ro sounding like roku or “six”, ten being the word for a decimal point used between numbers, bu being an alternate reading of fu, or “two”, and ro being “six”, giving us the date “6.26“.

While most people would let this day pass them by without even knowing of its existence, onsen lovers use it as an excuse to get out there and take a soak in the great outdoors. Our reporter Seiji Nakazawa is one of those people, but as he was in the office working late and unable to sink into a rotenburo like he wanted, he decided to share a memorable rotenburo experience with us instead.

Having visited dozens, if not hundreds, of hot springs in his lifetime, Seiji is something of an onsen connoisseur, so for a bath to stand out for him, it has to be special. When he told us the hot spring was called Yudomari Onsen, in Yakushima — a World Heritage-listed island said to be one of the inspirations for the Studio Ghibli movie “Princess Mononoke” — we immediately added it to our bucket list.

▼ Yakushima is world-famous for its pristine forests.

According to Seiji, there are a couple of things that make this outdoor bath memorable, with one being the cost, because at 300 yen per visit, he believes it’s one of the cheapest rotenburo in all of Japan. However, as with many special travel experiences, it’s the way he discovered the hot spring that makes it stick out in his mind, as well as the onsen itself, because it’s like nowhere else he’s ever visited.

The story begins when Seiji visited the island a couple of years back, and instead of staying in the large town of Miyanoura in the north, where most tourists tend to congregate, he stayed on the opposite side of the island, in a guesthouse in the middle of nowhere.

▼ When he arrived in the area without knowing anything about Yakushima, he found that there were no towns or private houses.

Truly in the middle of nowhere, Seiji found himself alone in the dorm until his third night there, when a guest, whom we’ll call Mr M, arrived. Seiji usually keeps to himself in shared accommodations, but his quiet surroundings made him long for company, so he found himself opening up to his dorm mate soon after meeting him. Mr M said he’d come to take photos of the starry skies, and he’d rented a car so they started talking about going somewhere together. However, the nights in Yakushima are dark and the stores close early, so by the time they got to talking about it, most of the stores had already closed.

Seiji used his phone to search for things to do nearby, and that’s when he discovered there was a really cheap hot spring in the vicinity…and it was open 24 hours a day. Seiji couldn’t believe there was a hot spring open at all hours of the day and night in such a remote location, and when he told Mr M about it, they immediately headed out to find it.

It was eerie driving along roads with no streetlights, and Seiji feared he might be spirited away by magical beings hiding in the darkness. However, sure enough, after a short drive, the two new friends arrived at their destination.