At the Yunessun Spa Resort in Hakone, visitors can bathe in pools filled with wine, sake, green tea or coffee for a total skin treatment like no other.
While beauty balms may be known for the wrinkle-reducing or moisturizing benefits of their ingredients, even the most potent product would have a tough time competing with the all-over body treatment offered at one Japanese spa.
At the Yunessun Spa Resort in Hakone, Japan (about 90km southwest of Tokyo), visitors can soak in pools filled with wine, sake, coffee or green tea for a total skin treatment like no other. Each of the pools has different skin-saving benefits, along with their own playful decor reflecting the beverage bath of choice.
Seek out one of these soaks for a specific skin need, or take a dip in all of them to really quench your body’s thirst.
Sake spa
An oversized cask drips fresh sake into the covered outdoor soaking pool, where bathers can benefit from the famous Japanese rice wine’s kojic acids, which work to decrease the appearance of age and sun spots.
Green tea spa
A 2m-tall teapot sits above a small covered outdoor pool filled with tea grown in Japan’s Tanzawa and Hakone mountains. Green tea contains antioxidants called catechins that protect cells and keep skin looking younger. Though all of the beverage spas are kept warm, travellers report the tea spa as the hottest, clocking in at around 42C.
Wine spa
With a 3.6m tall statue of a wine bottle and an outdoor pool filled with ruby red liquid, the wine spa is hard to miss. Red wine contains resveratol, an antioxidant that protects the skin from environmental damage, so fresh red wine is poured into the pool daily, and the spa uses specialty red wine a few times a year, including the annual November release of Beaujolais Nouveau, a favorite French wine in Japan.
Coffee spa
The coffee at Yunessun is brewed with water from natural hot springs in Hakone, and fresh batches are poured in periodically throughout the day. The caffeine in the coffee works to reduce the appearance of skin puffiness and cellulite.
The beverage spas are just four of Yunessun’s 26 relaxation attractions. Visitors can also enjoy the Turkish hammam, mist sauna or Finnish bath. Admission to the whole park costs 2,600 yen for adults and 1,300 yen for children.