It’s Friday night, and I am sitting in a beautiful hotel room in Manila. The window looks out to a modernized nightscape, and I could see Shangri-la Hotel in a distance. The Conan O’Brien Show is playing on the television and the audience is laughing at a punch-line I did not catch.

I have been living and working in Japan for a bit over a year and a half. In that time I’ve had many fun, unusual, exciting, disgusting experiences from surviving the culinary experience of fugu, aka blowfish, to clubbing at some unique spots in Tokyo. I think one must-do experience for anyone in Japan is going to an onsen, a hot spring.