This is where it all started.

On my first trip to Japan I found these bath tablets as amenities in a Tokyo hotel (Mitsui Garden Ginza), and loved it so much that I even asked the front desk to sell me a couple more. They gave me about 4-5 extra tablets and charged 200 Yen or so. I kept them for years, only using one on special occasions. The lavender one was bluish purple – dark lavender color, and smelled very nice, but I got really crazy about the Sweet Rose tablet shown above. It made this nice, pink, clear water with a perfectly natural scent of rose. My rating: 5/5.

More »

I got this from a very nice person who told me this was the real deal. It is. The manufacturer is a Kyoto based company, Kousaido (香彩堂), founded in 1994, who seems to be known for their incenses and other scented products. The best thing about this bath salt is also its fragrance. As you can see from the link above, some room sprays and incense are available from this company in the West, but their bath products might be hard to find even in Japan, I couldn’t even find them in their own webshop.. I read on a site that someone bought them at Kyoto Station. You can also get some of their products from ebay.

More »

This is a bath salt series by Earth Chemical Co., Ltd.  (アース製薬) The company was established in 1892 in Osaka, Japan. they offer a wide range of bath additives (more than 50 items) under different brand names within and outside of Bath Roman (バスロマン), but this webpage helps finding what you want by filtering the products based on milkiness, scent, type, color.. (if you know Japanese). There is also a Hot Spring Tour series, but for now I have only tried their skin care type ones sold in a containers. These are my favorite for now, as all the four kinds of bath powders I tried I really loved, and my absolute favorite is Bath Roman Bihada Pure Rose. These products are also great value – unless you have to pay for the shipping from Japan – I bought the 680g containers for 10-14 dollars, and they should be enough for at least 20 baths (you can use as much as you want). Some of their products, like the Hot Spring Tour ones are made in China, most others in Japan.

More »