Kusatsu Onsen is, as the name suggests, a hot spring resort area known for its many hot springs - onsen. Here you can find a wide range of small bathhouses open to the public. The temperature of these baths vary from almost lukewarm to boiling hot, and one of the pleasures of visiting this area is to walk around to different bathhouses and test them all. But going from bathhouse to bathhouse can be an expensive experience, as most of the bathhouses charge an entry fee of around 500 yen. There are also some bathhouses that can be entered for free but most of them are only available for Kusatsu citizens, so in this blogpost I'll introduce 3 bathhouses in Kusatsu Onsen that any visitor can enter free of charge. 

Kusatsu Onsen is situated in Gunma, a prefecture to the north of Tokyo and Saitama. Kusatsu is one of Japan's most famous onsen resorts, and tourists travel from near and far to experience the healing hot springs of Kusatsu. 

The hot spring water in the center of In Kusatsu can hold up to around 90°C, which is way too hot to bathe in. When the locals were looking for a way to cool down the water without diluting it they came up with the yumomi (湯もみ) technique, a word which literarily means to rub the water. The practice is still kept alive in some places, and during a recent trip to Kusatsu we went to Netsu no Yu in the center of the village to check out their yumomi performance.

As a part of our visit to Inle Lake we went on a day trip around the lake to see various parts of the local life style culture, a trip that included among others a stop at a lotus weaving factory and the Jumping Cat Monastery. After our short stop at the monastery our boat driver took us through a long and narrow creek to Indein village. 

The Nga Phe Kyaung monastery is both the biggest and oldest monastery in Inle Lake. Among tourists it is still known as the "jumping cat monastery" - a name it got because of the cats living there, who had been trained by the monks to jump through little hoops. You can see a simple YouTube clip that demonstrates the practice below:

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