New bathhouse guidelines for tourists in Tokyo

Showers in the Ryokan Shigetsu public bath, Tokyo. Image by Maarten Heerlien / CC BY 2.0

In a bid to better inform tourists visiting Tokyo’s public bathhouses – called ‘sentō’ in Japanese – bathing etiquette guides have been produced in English, Chinese and Korean. According to the Tokyo Sento Association, some tourists have in the past not understood all of the dos and don’ts of bathing at sentō, a process that has a number of strict rules, including that bathers are required to remove all clothing and wash and rinse thoroughly before entering the bath itself. With the multilingual tips, there are also hopes to revive the bathhouse industry by appealing to more international visitors. Read more: japantimes.co.jp