Seika and I went to onsen after she finished her overnight shift at work. Onsen is a Japanese hot spring. I love hot springs and wanted to visit at least one onsen! We went to Solaniwa Onsen in Osaka Bay Tower, it was fancy.

We changed into a yukata, a decorative, cotton robe for onsen.

Bedrock Sauna

At the place, we also bought access to the bedrock saunas. Bedrock saunas originated in Japan, and it is essentially heated stone spa rooms. It was definitely worthwhile! We had a separate outfit for bedrock sauna that was more casual, which made it easier to lay down and also better to sweat in.

There were 7 rooms with different resting positions, decorations, and temperatures. We visited all the rooms for about 15 minutes each. The hottest room was 60°C, and the coldest room was 10°C. I’d never experienced sauna like this before. I really enjoyed it and would like to do it again!

I was impressed that we were able to leave our water bottles nearby in a refrigerator where they also provided a marker to label our drinks. I don’t think the same treatment or security would exist in America.

Onsen

Then we went to the public onsen part. It is separated by gender, and you are completely naked. Obviously there are no actual pictures of this part, but here are some pictures from the website.

Before getting into the pools, there’s a place to take a shower. Each shower has it’s own sit down cubicle and mirror with shampoos and everything.

Then we bathed in each of the 9 different baths: some were warm, some were hot, one was very cold—each pool had it’s own special water with unique health benefits. Our favorite was the carbonated spring.

One of the baths also contained just the onsen source water!

I could stay here all day!

Dotonbori snacks

Before meeting up with some friends, Seika and I had a couple of snacks at Dotonbori.

Okonomiyaki with friends

We met up with some of Seika’s friends and coworkers at an okonomiyaki place.

The place only seated twelve at a time, and we had a view of our food being made. The okonomiyaki was so fresh and fluffy!

After, we wandered around Dotonbori a bit with friends.

We tried sake flavored kit kats. It kind of tasted like banana.

Purikura

We then went to a purikura, a Japanese photo booth print club, which is especially popular with the teenage girls. I’ve experienced a photo booth before, but nothing like this! Here, we were recommended poses by the machine (which was super helpful), and we were also given time to add words and stickers and even alter the sizes of our facial features. I didn’t know what I was doing, so I just added the fun Japanese phrases.

It was so fun and silly! I love purikura!!!

American PB&J’s

Earlier that morning, we had PB&J’s. Among the American snacks, I brought Smucker’s grape jelly. They have jam in Japan, but not jelly. I didn’t bring sliced bread or peanut butter, but I was able to acquire the peanut butter at a coffee store at the mall that also sold some international goodies, and sliced bread at the supermarket.

Seika was very interested in having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and learning how to make them. I taught Seika and her mom how to make them for our late breakfast. Later, her Dad had some. He was asleep after his overnight work shift.

The perfect PB&J has thin peanut butter on both slices of bread, so the jelly doesn’t soak into the bread. The amount of jelly is up to interpretation, but we decided to add a bit more jelly the second time. We had the classic close-faced school lunchtime version but agreed that an open-faced sandwich tasted more flavorful. I explained that you can eat the crust, but also sometimes kids will leave the crust and mom will eat it, or even kids will ask for the crust to be cut off. We discussed the different ways to cut it: big diagonal triangles are the most classic and fun way, small triangles are the cute sharable and also small kid-friendly way, and rectangles are an option as well.

They really enjoyed the PB&J’s!