This sounds so marvelous I am thinking 2006 must include a trip to a spring somewhere in the world.
-Z

[UPDATE: the link for more below was wrong until just now. Try again if you got the lotus last time. 01.04.2006]
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The feeling of calm and wellbeing you get after soaking in a sento is indescribable; it’s a natural high brought on by cleanliness and a complete sense of mental, physical and spiritual relaxation. The spiritual part is most noticeable, of course, if you’re soaking in an outdoor pool at the top of a mountain, looking out at a crater of steaming geysers (as I did last year in Hokkaido, at a place called Noboribetsu), or lying in a steamy rock-pool in a snowy valley.

more . . .