“I want to get into a hot tub filled with warm water,” Satoshi Furukawa, Japanese surgeon and astronaut, said in an interview right after his return from the International Space Station in 2011.

I can agree with him now. I moved to Oregon from Japan about five years ago, and one of the things I miss from Japan, besides people I love and delicious food, is hot springs. I love every moment of it — the initial shock of the heat to the gradual relaxation in the warm water — it can’t be expressed in words, but so so good.

Most homes in Japan have a hot tub by the shower, so you can take a hot bath daily if you like. But the special ones are when you go on a trip. Hotels usually have public baths with large hot tubs for the guests to rest up from the day of traveling or start the morning with

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