Five of the best ‘sento’ bathhouse experiences in Tokyo

This article is part of a collaboration between Nikkei Asia and FT Globetrotter, showcasing the best journalism from Nikkei Asia writers about cities across the region. You can read more from Globetrotter here.

Whenever I’m hungover, tired, stressed, sweaty after a run or just want to relax, I head to my nearest public bathhouse, or sento, to get naked with the locals and soak in the hot tubs. No matter how I feel before bathing, I feel rejuvenated afterward.

Every one of Tokyo’s 500 or so sento offers a unique atmosphere, and varying combinations of bathing experiences. They range from simple hot-water baths (careful, some are scalding) to microbubble and herb-infused tubs, and in some places the daunting denki buro, in which a low-level electric current surges through your body. But the most invigorating for me is the mizu buro, a bath often cooled to under 15 C that snaps you out of a post-soak or sauna haze and readies you for another dip in the hot tub.

The ritual for any sento is basically the same. After paying 500 yen (about $3.45) at the front desk -- a flat fee for all bathhouses in the capital -- and a few hundred yen extra for a sauna, men and women file through a noren curtain into their respective changing rooms. All sento in Tokyo are strictly partitioned by gender.

You take off your clothes, put them in a locker and go into the bathing area with your dignity covered by a small towel (or you can just let it all hang out). Grab a small stool and basin, and find a spot to scrub yourself thoroughly clean -- the baths are for soaking, not for washing. Now it’s time to relax. Keeping your towel out of the water and ensuring no suds remain on your body, get into one of the tubs, lie back and feel the heat wash over you as you gaze at a painting of Mount Fuji. Some folk can sit in the tub for seemingly hours; others, like me, prefer short dips and rotate through the baths on offer.

The sento is a great leveler, as everyone has equal status when stripped down to their birthday suit. People are courteous and make space for others with short nods. The bathers range from grandfathers to infants, from business executives to convenience-store workers, and from priests to gangsters. I once sat in a sauna next to a man with full-body tattoos reading a yakuza gossip magazine.

Once changed, you can relax with a cold drink (often flavored milk or a beer) in a common room with a TV showing the news or the latest Tokyo Yomiuri Giants baseball game. Some pay 100 yen for the use of a massage chair.

Communal bathing has been a custom in Japan for more than a millennium, originally in temples as part of a Buddhist cleansing ritual. Sento came to be a common sight in urban areas during the Edo period (1603-1867). But construction really started to boom in poorer areas of Tokyo after the 1923 earthquake, giving migrant workers a place to bathe after a day spent toiling to rebuild the capital. The bombing of Tokyo in WWII also left many without baths or even homes, prompting another rush to build bathhouses. The number of registered sento in the country peaked at 17,999 but that has fallen to 1,865. The current surge in energy prices is increasing already expensive heating bills, forcing some places to reduce operating hours.

But sento culture remains strong. Many places have had face-lifts in recent years to appeal to a younger, hip crowd, and serve as running stations where you can leave a change of clothes in a locker before heading out for a jog followed by a soak. And those steeped in history that try to maintain a community spirit continue to attract loyal bathers.

Here are five bathhouses in Tokyo that will offer you a rejuvenating experience for mind, body and soul -- plus some suggestions for your post-soak experience.

This family-run sento has served this edge of the trendy Shibuya area since 1928. But rather than go out of business like many of its peers, it was one of the first in the area to modernize with a full renovation in 2011.

The first thing that hits you as you climb down the steps into the lobby is the jazz piped throughout the bathhouse. On sale are a series of branded T-shirts (I own one), towels, sauna hats and cute knickknacks.

The bathhouse’s concept is “slow.” It combines the traditional aspects of a sento -- with the almost obligatory Mount Fuji painting and milk drinks -- with contemporary technology. Recent improvements have heated up the sauna and cooled down the cold bath, making for contrasting bathing sensations.

Bunka Yokusen’s trademark is the nanobubbles in its main tub that bring a silky glow to your skin. On Sundays, however, it switches to specialty herbal baths -- mugwort, Chinese rubber tree, Epsom salts and peach-leaf extract made appearances one recent month.

Lying just off the Nakasendo, one of the two road routes from Tokyo to Kyoto during the Edo period, Inari-yu is for the traditionalist.

This no-frills sento with its temple-style architecture sits in a narrow street of a neighborhood that feels little changed from more than a century ago. Established in 1914 and rebuilt in 1930 after the 1923 earthquake, Inari-yu was registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2020.

No fancy baths here, just three tubs -- one warm, one hot, one fit for boiling lobsters. A long painting of Mount Fuji glimmering behind an island-filled lake stretches between the divided male and female bathing areas. The cypress water buckets are another nod to sento heritage.

Inari-yu was used as the location for "Thermae Romae," the Japanese movie adaptation of a manga about a struggling Roman-bathhouse architect who travels forward in time to find inspiration in a modern Japanese sento. A Netflix animation was released in March.

What Inari-yu had lacked was a communal area where people could relax with a post-soak drink. But that has changed thanks to Sento & Neighborhood, a nonprofit led by American urban activist and writer Sam Holden that aims to preserve Japan’s public bathhouses. It recently refurbished an abandoned nagaya tenement next to the sento into a community space. Beer is on tap.

The rare reservation button on Kogane-yu’s website illustrates the popularity of this sento in the shadow of Tokyo’s landmark Skytree tower. You can book online a night in a spacious capsule-type hotel room, a body scrub or a slot in the sauna -- advisable, as about half a dozen people were waiting outside for a berth when I visited recently.

It was facing closure at the start of the pandemic, so the owners turned to crowdfunding to renovate the 90-year-old site. They got in architect Jo Nagasaka to lead the face-lift, which now includes a craft beer bar with DJ decks to boot. The creative flourishes are overseen by contemporary artist Hiroko Takahashi, and manga artist Yoriko Hoshi painted the traditional mural of historic bucolic scenes inside the bathhouse.

The bathing area is relatively small, but has four pristine baths: hot, herbal, carbonated and cold. If you booked or are lucky enough to avoid a queue, the sauna area that lies to the back is the real gem of Kogane-yu. The benches are decked in fragrant, domestically produced hiba wood, and the maifan-stone-clad walls raise the humidity for a steamy perspiratory experience. The large tub next to the sweat-room is cooled to 15 C, and the outside seats are made for snoozing.

Once refreshed, it’s time for a rehydrating glass of one of the sento’s original craft beers to a soundtrack of some choice cuts. Nonalcoholic beverages are available too.

On a side street in the boutique-rich suburb of Nakameguro, a climb up a flight of stairs takes you into the small oasis of calm that is the Kohmeisen sento. A family-run business for three generations, this bathhouse was refurbished in 2014 in a tasteful style that reflects the area around it.

Up another set of stairs is a terrace with an outside bath. Protected from prying eyes by a tall wooden structure that allows bathers to look up at the sky, this rotenburo (open-air bath) is a unique experience. The tranquilty of a soak in the crystal-clear pool is broken every few minutes by the gentle thud of a train passing by just meters away. The weather is not an issue (a day before my recent visit, the terrace stayed open during a typhoon — something this writer wants to experience).

Those who wish to use the sauna have to be either patient or avoid weekends. The craze in Japan among young people for steam rooms meant a queue for the hammam snaked around the bathhouse.

The small reception area doesn’t have space for a post-soak refreshment, but the myriad restaurants and cafes nearby mean you don’t have to look far to rehydrate.

Daikoku-yu is the retro sibling of the swanky Kogane-yu, just a few minutes’ walk away. The emphasis here is on tradition — there’s no craft beer or DJs, just the usual milk drinks and the echoing sound of running water.

The bathing experience is probably better than its more illustrious neighbor. It’s not crowded, there is a lot more space to enjoy a good soak and there are no queues for the sauna (which houses a small TV fixed to a commercial channel showing dramas and gossip shows). 

This sento has a range of tubs: three types of Jacuzzi, a herbal bath and a micro-bubble bath that leaves your skin silky-smooth. Depending on the day (the owners swap the men’s and women’s area daily), one side has a large rotenburo, while the other only has a cramped outside area.

The best part of my recent visit was climbing a staircase with a beautiful hinoki (Japanese cypress) fragrance to an outdoor relaxation area. Lying down in a hammock, I looked up at clear blue skies and the top of the nearby Skytree tower before being swayed into a lovely nap.