How a Hot Spring in the Middle of Nowhere Can Still Pack House during a Coronavirus Outbreak

For the Japanese and foreigners alike, Japan is known as a land of hot springs... Perhaps too many hot springs. In a land where people have too few holidays and young workers faces decreasing starting salaries and increasing uncertainties in their job security, coaxing more people to far away from major cities even for a weekend trip is proving more and more difficult. And for those who are looking for an ideal dip in naturally warm waters, there are just too many hotels and hot spring towns fighting for attention using ever more ingenious ways.

That ingenuity is particularly needed for those hot springs that are genuinely inconvenient to get to. When your location is bad compared to competitors who are lucky to geographically closer to major cities, rail lines, and highways, you have to be extra special to draw people in. The promises of waters with extra healing properties or a relative lack of crowds are not enough when too many hot spring hotels across the country that can advertise using the exact same lines. And as Japan and the world at large fights an emerging Coronavirus pandemic, getting people to share bathwater has become even harder. 

Given the generality grim reality facing the hot spring industry, Takaragawa Onsen, in the depth of Gunma prefecture's mountain valleys, has done relatively well. On a regular weekend, its thirty-seater minibus picking up customers at the nearest high speed train station 40 minutes drive away was completely full, attracting a crowd that is a solid mix of holidaymakers from Tokyo and across the world. For a spa-centered inn that is literally in the middle of nowhere in the middle of mountain valley that has absolutely nothing for miles around, it is a genuine achievement. 

Getting an international group of people to show up in the midst of a Coronavirus scare illustrates two strengths of Takaragawa Onsen. One is the Onsen's unabashed catering to a foreign-only crowd. In the minibus that took customers from the train station to the hotel, check in procedures were first explained in English before Japanese. And when the bus arrived, the hotel staff readying for check in were ready to communicate entirely in English and Chinese, with additional signs in Thai. In an industry that continues to cling to the idea of hot spring as a genuine Japanese tradition only appreciable by the Japanese themselves, this direct approach to foreigners remains a rarity. 

That is not to say that the Onsen has abandoned the traditional. Quite the opposite, it clings to visible examples of Japanese traditions. Japanese wooden dolls, sculptures, Buddhist statues, and even staffed animals are scattered around its quaintly wooden hallways and hot spring-studded gardens, giving customers opportunities to take pictures everywhere they go. The dinner it's restaurant offers is equally picturesque. Traditional Japanese dishes, with particularly colorful arrangements on meticulous dishes, offer the perfect Instagram shots. 

The potentially intentional visual focus speaks to the second strength of Takaragawa. By giving customers plenty of opportunities to take pictures, it allows itself to marketed through words of mouth for free, as customers post their pictures on their social media. Such social media posts greatly complement the Onsen's most well-known and certainly most picturesque feature: the largest outdoor hot spring pool in Japan that continues to allow men and women to bathe together. While regular customers are unsurprisingly not allowed to take pictures of the pools to preserve people's privacy, plenty of pictures of the pool, taken by journalists and influencers, find their way into social media posts. 

Such strengths exist despite the Onsen's many downsides. Indoor hot spring is aging with rust and peeling paint, online posts complain about the mediocre food and relatively high prices, and even that largest outdoor hot spring pool is rather lukewarm, maybe just because cold winds in winter can quickly chill its large surface area. With no shower room in its many rooms and with its outdoor hot springs, facilities can certainly use some investments to cater to modern sensitivities about privacy and convenience. Yet, the Onsen, running on a low budget in the middle of nowhere, can draw people in because it plays to its strengths and thus hide its weaknesses. 

It is difficult to say whether Takaragawa's strengths can be easily copied by others. The ability of men and women to bathe together, for instance, relies on a license that is no longer issued to new operators. But the mixed bathing certain draw couples seeking to deepen their romance. But other strengths can be emulated. Hiring foreigners to work and putting photogenic paraphernalia around the premises are something that other hot springs should also pursue, at the very least, to maintain vitality in a shrinking domestic market.