An attendant buries your body up to the neck in sand heated by a spring at 84.7°C.
On Surigahama Beach, five minutes' walk from JR Ibusuki Station, an attendant with a shovel buries the visitor, wrapped in a light yukata, in the hot sand up to the neck, leaving only the head out, for ten to fifteen minutes. The sand is heated from below by a hot spring at 84.7°C, and when the tide goes out you can see steam rising from the beach. The practice is already recorded in the Sangoku Meisho Zue, the geographical compendium of the Satsuma domain compiled in 1843, as a remedy for neuralgia.
A public facility opened in 1978 so that the sand bath could be taken on rainy days too; today it is the best-known way into the Ibusuki sunamushi practice.
ℹ️ Open 8:30–21:00 (last entry 20:00), service suspended 12:00–13:00 on weekdays. Open all year, except for temporary closures for facility maintenance in July and December (dates vary). Sand bath ticket: adults ¥1,500, children ¥800 in the normal period (¥2,000/¥1,000 in peak periods: Golden Week, Obon, year end).
🚉 Steam Sand Bath Hall · in front of the station
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