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Members of the Tokyo Public Bath Circle pose for a
commemorative photo after a bath at Aqua Dolphin Land
This is a spiffy new bath built into the first floor of a sleek apartment
building. It boasts immaculate blue-and-white tiling and the latest
fixtures, is lit by globes on white columns, and has two state-of-the-art
massage chairs and a foot-massager in each changing room. All water
is filtered to soften it and the temperature is monitored by a digital
temperature gauge showing a rock-steady 42.1 degrees. A handout styles
the bath as a "21st Century Super Furo." The spacious sauna (330 yen
extra), up a flight of stairs to its own mezzanine, is lit by far
infrared lamps. The mizuburo cold bath is just outside the sauna,
which makes some sense but means that users of all baths but the sauna
have to trek up and down the stairs for a cold refresher. The massage
jets in the main baths are so powerful you cannot comfortably stop
them with your hand. There is an herbal bath, a waterfall bath where
you hit a button and warm water cascades down to pommel your head
and shoulders, and a somewhat nurui ("tepid"--a pejorative word in
this context) outside bath which three stories up gives a view of
a patch of sky, creating the illusion you are a frog at the bottom
of a well and providing astounding acoustics for a short burst of
song. The outside bath has no greenery and is too architectural to
evoke anything natural, being floored by marble and lit by carriage
lamps. In the changing rooms and the main lobby, where cans of Asahi
Dry are available for 240 yen, the ceilings are inset with trompe
d'oiel paintings of pink clouds and chubby cherubs, as if by Tiepolo.
The bath is three stops from Shibamata, a characterful neighborhood
with an Old Tokyo feeling to it, a few hundred meters from Edogawa,
the Edo River, which for 100 yen you can contract to be rowed across
in a boat full of rollicking tourists.
current review
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