I grew up in a type of a Japanese wooden house called kominkas in Gunsan, South Korea. A modest one. What I remember is not the architecture as a subject but as a sensation. The smell of aged wood and how the rain water would cascade down the roof tiles. The particular give of the outer floorboards, and the sound they made underfoot. The characteristics of the engawa. I knew the feel of that world long before I knew anything about it.
The water came later, and it came as medicine. I had eczema no doctor could settle. The onsen did what the prescriptions could not. What began as relief became a habit, then a practice, then a quarter century of returning. By 1999, my parents and I were organizing gatherings in Barstow, California to make the drive together to the Tecopa Hot Springs in the California desert, for the reason anyone gathers around hot water. It heals people, and it is better shared.
I have spent my career in travel and technology in Silicon Valley, and have also been fortunate to have traveled to over 30 countries.
I helped build a luxury travel marketplace, launching markets across seven continents and working alongside tourism boards from New Zealand to South Africa. Work I led there was covered by The New York Times, CNN, and Condé Nast Traveler. One of those journeys was in Japan. Spirits of Japan, built with Jiro Ono and Japan’s great distilleries. It taught me what a Japanese partner expects of a foreign one. Preparation, deference, and the patience to be told no.
I also led business and marketing there. That is how I know how a place comes to be known, and how easily it is misrepresented along the way.
Which is why this Society exists. When I finally went looking for a verified record of the water, the pH, the source, the people who keep it, I could not find one. Not in English. Often not in Japanese either. Everything on this site is an attempt to close that gap, and to be honest about what is still open.
Steve H. Yu is the person accountable for everything published here. The Society is independently funded. No external investors, no institutional backers, no paid placements.