Let me be honest with you here. I was never a huge onsen（温泉...hot spring）fan. For that matter, I wasn't even all that enthused about o-furo（お風呂...bath）. It's rather strange...I usually think of myself as being a patient person but that quality goes out the window when the bath comes into the picture. I've taken dips at the onsen such as the ones at the Daitokan ryokan in the city of Ito as seen above but frankly all I can endure is 5 minutes before I have to get out of the hot water with many beneficial effects.
Is it the heat? Nope, in fact, I've been witness to some fellow JET Programme teachers flying out of the water in an onsen in Gunma Prefecture 30 years ago, looking as red as cooked lobsters while I calmly stayed in the water...for a few more minutes (well, maybe 10...I was more patient back then, I guess). The real reason is that I simply never enjoyed sitting in a bathtub for an extended period of time. Showers have been more my thing: get in, soap up, rinse off and then out of there in less than 5 minutes. And yet, there is all that culture surrounding this very beloved of Japanese traditions, from the onsen towns that have been built up around the hot springs to the luscious dinners that have often come after the good ol' soak. Plus at the neigbourhood sento（銭湯...public baths）, people can also look forward to fans, massage chairs and old-style bottles of milk to slake their thirst.
Recently on NHK via TV Japan, there's been a show on Wednesday nights called "Sando no O-furo Itadakimasu"（サンドのお風呂いただきます...Sandwichman's Bath, Please） which stars the popular manzai comedy duo, Sandwichman（サンドウィッチマン）, as they tour the various onsen areas, large and small, throughout Japan. Included in each episode is narration by KOM_I（コムアイ）, the performer of eclectic music unit, Suiyoubi no Campanella（水曜日のカンパネラ）.
Also, each time the scene changes, there is a KOM_I-generated "Ii yu da ne~"（いい湯だね...Nice bath, huh?）voice clip. I had just regarded it as merely something that the singer concocted for "Sando", but later on I discovered that the line was actually part of a song titled "Diablo"（ディアブロ）from their first EP single as an indies unit back in April 2015, "Triathlon"（トライアスロン）.
Created by fellow Suiyoubi member Hidefumi Kenmochi（ケンモチヒデフミ）, I can't really say that "Diablo" is one of their electropop songs. The music is pretty subtle (with some zigs and zags) actually, maybe even minimalist with some beats with the stress on KOM_I's rapping of the benefits and potential banes of the sento experience. The music video with her acting as an old-fashioned proprietress of a public bath makes this the most comical exposure I've had with the band thus far. Even the title, "Diablo", as was made clear at the end of the video, is a Japanese pun on "Dear Buro" (Dear Bath).
As for "Triathlon", it made it up to No. 23 on Oricon. To wrap up, to show that I bear no ill will to those who love being immersed in hot/warm water for an extended period of time, here is a video on Japanese commercials dealing with baths.
Diablo means "Devil" in Spanish.
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