Shirahama Onsen Shirarayu

Shirarayu is a municipally run public bathhouse in Shirahama Town, Wakayama Prefecture, standing just back from Shirarahama, the white sand beach that gives the resort its name. Shirahama Onsen itself is ancient: it appears in the Nihon Shoki and the Man'yoshu under the name Muro no Yu and is counted alongside Arima and Dogo among Japan's three oldest hot springs. Shirarayu, however, is not one of those ancient rock pools. It is a sotoyu, a neighbourhood bath run by the town, the kind of place residents walk to with a washbasin under one arm. The building is timber-framed with a tiled roof, and the entrance opens into a tall hall with exposed beams and a bandai, the raised attendant's seat of an old-fashioned Japanese bathhouse.

The water comes from a source named Suzushiyu, piped in by the Shirahama Onsen Tochi company. It is a sodium chloride spring emerging at 66.8C with a flow of 171 litres per minute, clear in appearance and strongly salty to the taste; the Wakayama Prefecture Onsen Association classifies it as a neutral, hypertonic, high-temperature spring. Because the source is so hot, water is added to hold the tubs at a bathable temperature, but nothing is heated and nothing is recirculated or filtered, and the baths are drained and refilled completely every day. The posted indications are cuts, burns, chronic skin conditions and chronic gynaecological complaints.

The bathing floor is on the second storey. There is no open-air bath, only a plain indoor tub for each sex, but the wide windows facing the tubs look straight out over the white sand of Shirarahama and the Pacific beyond. Admission is 420 yen for adults, 140 yen for children aged six to eleven and 80 yen for children aged three to five, with a ten-visit ticket at 3,000 yen for adults. The bath opens to town residents only from 07:00 to 09:00; general visitors may enter from 09:00 to 11:00, with last entry at 10:30, and again from 14:00 to 21:30, with last entry at 21:00, so it is shut through the middle of the day. It closes every Thursday. Towels cost 200 yen and soap, shampoo and conditioner 40 yen each, with coin lockers at 100 yen, so there is no need to bring anything. Parking is limited to six spaces.