395 Have a Sauna. 102 Mention a Cold Bath

SAKURA YAKUSHIMA in Kagoshima describes its sauna like this.

The sauna is an ocean-view barrel type, electric, with self-löyly.

Grandioso Okinawa Pool Villa Onna 7 describes its sauna like this.

Villa A also has a sauna.

In the listing data, both count as one stay with a sauna.

Seven list all four

How to choose a villa with a sauna set out four things to check before booking: the type, löyly, the cold bath and where you cool off afterwards. So how often are those four actually written down?

Of the 654 stays listed on Tomaribi, 395 have a sauna: 197 villas and 198 glamping sites. Counting what their listings say gives this.

What you want to know	Stays mentioning it	Share
Type (barrel, tent, indoor)	167	42%
Cold bath	102	26%
Löyly	61	15%
Cooling off outside	64	16%
Heat source (wood or electric)	33	8%

Sorted by how many of the four appear, the skew is sharper still.

Points covered	Stays	Share
0	150	38%
1	142	36%
2	64	16%
3	32	8%
4	7	1.8%

Seven of the 395 cover all four. And 150 cover none of them.

They are not short listings

There is an obvious objection. Perhaps those listings are simply short, and the sauna detail falls off the end.

It does not hold. The 150 that cover nothing have a median listing length of about 410 characters. The seven that cover everything run to 503. The median across all 395 is 437. Barely a difference.

Narrow to the 201 listings at or above the median length and 59 still cover nothing, with a cold bath mentioned at 28%, against 26% across all 395.

Length is not the constraint. asa YATSUGATAKE in Nagano spends 584 characters and gets as far as the wide wooden deck running to the sauna building, without saying what the sauna is. CRANDS in Akita runs to 691 and stops at “a wood stove and a private sauna”.

This is not a failing on anyone’s part. A listing is not a spec sheet, and the type of sauna is not the deciding factor for most travellers. But for someone choosing on the sauna, something is missing at 388 of the 395.

Where the type is stated, it splits by kind

Look at the 167 that do state a type and villas and glamping sites diverge.

Barrel saunas number 109: 43 villas against 66 glamping sites. Of the 52 tent saunas, 42 are at glamping sites, four fifths of them. Indoor and dry saunas invert it, with 13 of 18 at villas.

The same line runs through this as through kitchens go to the villa, the big bath to glamping. Keep it inside the building and it is an indoor sauna; move it outside and it is a barrel or a tent. Glamping units are small, so the sauna goes outdoors from the start.

Only 33 name a heat source: 28 wood, six electric. Eleven go as far as the stove brand, the most detailed being SAUNA&VILLA Takibi in Hokkaido with “a genuine Harvia wood-fired Finnish sauna (löyly-ready, up to 6 people)”.

The same words, a different arrangement

By count, saunas are near-identical: 197 villas and 198 glamping sites. Even the ones stating the sauna is private or exclusive split evenly, 45 and 45.

Count differently and the gap opens. Eighteen stays say the sauna costs extra or must be booked. Seventeen of those are glamping sites.

OKU-TOYA CLUB in Hokkaido writes that “on the grounds a standalone sauna building lets you warm through to the crackle of firewood and then cool off in the open air with a view of Lake Toya”, at 1,500 yen for 60 minutes, swimwear required. GRAN LAKE TOTTORI has a shared sauna in an Estonian cabin, by reservation, swimwear required. Rivilas Park USA in Kochi: “the tent sauna is booked in 90-minute slots”.

Eighteen stays require swimwear. Needing swimwear means the sauna is not yours alone.

A villa’s “sauna” usually means one attached to the building. A glamping site’s “sauna” may mean one on the grounds that you book by the hour. The matching 198s are not counting the same thing.

At 13, the cold bath is the sea or a river

Of the 102 that mention a cold bath, 13 say the cold bath is nature itself.

Itoshima Sauna Villa in Fukuoka has the Itoshima sea in front of it serving as the cold bath. THE VIBES VILLA Katsuura in Chiba reaches 110 degrees, and the cold bath is the sea itself. At Totonoi in Nara, a river nearby does the job. That style is the subject of the cold bath is the sea and the river.

There is fine print in the other direction too. Manten no Yado IORI in Gifu writes that each unit has “a barrel sauna with a Goemon-style cold bath (löyly allowed; the cold bath is closed in winter)”. A cold bath can exist and still be unavailable when you go.

Exactly one of the 395 mentions a chiller.

The seven

For reference, the seven that covered all four.

SAKURA YAKUSHIMA in Kagoshima, SAUNARF Ise-Shima in Mie, Sense of wonder in Oita, Armin Base in Yamanashi, Glamping & Sauna Resort “Aroma Olive” in Fukuoka, Manten no Yado IORI in Gifu, and SAUNA&VILLA Takibi in Hokkaido.

Three of the seven have sauna in the name. The places where the sauna is the point are the ones that describe it.

What this counts, and what it does not

The denominator is 654 listings (published, duplicates excluded). The 395 come from the facility tag in the listing data: 197 villas and 198 glamping sites.

Type, löyly, cold bath and cooling off were counted from listing text rather than tags. That text is written by the editors from official information, so “not in the text” covers both “not published by the property” and “published but not carried into a short introduction”. The length figures suggest mostly the former, but not conclusively.

And a listing that says nothing is not a listing without a cold bath. What was counted is not whether the facility exists, but whether you can find out before booking.

Facilities also get added. Check the official site before you book.

One line is enough

“Could you tell me how the sauna is set up?”

Type and heat source. Whether löyly is allowed. What the cold bath is. Where you cool off. With those four answered, all that is left is going.

Then one more. Is it attached to your building, or on the grounds and borrowed? Does it cost extra, does it need booking? At a glamping site, that second question is the one that bites on the day.

The words “with sauna” say only that a sauna exists. At 388 of the 395, everything after that has to be asked.

• How to choose a villa with a sauna
• The cold bath is the sea and the river
• Kitchens go to the villa, the big bath to glamping
• How many stays survive each filter