Japanese people have enjoyed it once at least for sure. The picture below is hot spring which I went last December when I went back to Japan.
A few weeks before, my wife found hot spring place at the central California where not every room, but each room has own hot tab of sulfur based hot spring. So we can enjoy own hot spring anytime except from midnight to early morning.
It had been almost more that 10 months since I took a bath when I went back to Japan last new year. Although some people knows, Japanese people usually take a bath everyday and put your body in hot water to relax your body. It's one of our customs and culture. That's why we wanted to there. So if you look at a bath tube in Japan, it is deeper and bigger than that of U.S. in order to fill hot water.
If you go to Japan, it's easily find hot spring place almos all around Japan country, especially at mountain side. Even in the central Tokyo, hot spring is available, but people do not desire it, because what people desire hot spring for is usually not only hot spring its self but also beautiful scenery actually. In addition to that, local food is available and it is usually included in a price which is one of interesting points in hot spring hotel.
We actually went to the Sycamore mineral hot spring in San Luis Obispo at the central California. When I made a reservation, which was a few week before the our stay, the day of the stay was Saturday, its price was around $240 for each room. At first, I thought it was really expensive because it was the price without dinner and breakfast in the following day. They are usually included in a price in Japan. However, we wanted to take hot spring, so we did not have a coice. San Luis Obispo is located to South of San Jose, so there are mainly two ways to get there. One of them is to take HWY 101 which is almost straight road all the way, and second one is to take HWY 1 which is a road along pacific coast, called Big sur. Unfortunately, the day of stay was rainy day, but when I looked at the real time rain map before I left home, there was no rainy cloud around the sea coast, although it was raining around my apartment. Actually I decided to take HWY 1 while hoping that it was fine weather there. But, fortunately it was foggy situation there without rain. I could say I could enjoy 50% of Big sur. Afte taking late lunch at Morro bay, we got the hot spring place. When I opened my door of my car, I felt a little bit of sulfur smell which reminded me of coming to hot spring, which I felt every time when I visit hot spring places in Japan. After completing check in, I got keys of my room and headed for the room. When I open the door of the gate of our room, there is a patio with own plastic bath tub. When I looked it at the first time, I was a little bit disappointed at the looking from Japanese hot spring point of view because authentic bath tub is supposed to be made from wood. At the same time, I accepted that this is American style to maximize functionalities in order to hot spring. The bath tub was empty so I had to put hot spring water by myself to tune tap, which takes more that 30 mins to fill the bath tub at 90% full. Hot spring water its self was very good and I actually tried twice at the night and the morning respectively.
Totally, it was very good quality and situation where each room has own bath tub, when I consider the history of American hot spring. It would be less than 200 years, maybe. It still has huge potential to develop own hot spring culture. I'm used to Japanese hot spring but I do not mean that American hot spring culture should be Japanese one.
http://www.sycamoresprings.com/
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