Just a lot of hot water

[Charles]

Long-term studies into "radiation hormesis", what the quack theory is called have shown that there is no benefit to exposing oneself to any amount of extra radiation. Cancer rates are purely proportional with the amount of exposure.

I've seen several research papers that indicate there is a benefit. There wouldn't be any research into radiation hormesis at ALL if they hadn't found statistics to support it. Yeah it's counterintuitive. Radiation hormesis was first discovered by researchers that noticed that radiologists who worked routinely with x rays and radioactive substances, and had routine occupational exposures, lived longer on average than non-radiologists working in the same hospital.
[quote="EZPZ"]If people can get skin cancer by repeated low-dose exposure to UV light, then the same should be true of radon. There is no radiation defense mechanism the body has save programmed cell-death]
Your knowledge of radiation physics is quite defective. Radon emits alpha particles which can be stopped by as little as a sheet of paper.. or the top layer of your skin. UV radiation is much more energetic and can penetrate deeply into your skin, causing subsurface damage.
I have bad news for you: you're soaking in low levels of radiation right now. It comes from all directions, from every form of matter in the universe, even from cosmic rays raining down from the skies. The human body evolved in an environment filled with low level radiation, we are adapted to its presence.

[EZPZ]

Looking into hormesis more, I retract my statement. It seems as though new research is dismissing the 'no-threshold response' theory. This may or may not apply to radon however.

Yes I do know that alpha particles can not get past skin, but moving around in radon laced water may introduce alpha particles into the mouth, nose or eyes.

Also, there is a risk of danger for whoever is administering this radon (as a gas?) to the water. There does not seem to be any regulation of its application.

[Charles]

The classic radon risk is long term exposure, typically it's a concrete basement bedroom where radon coming up through the ground infiltrates through the floors. Sleeping in that environment for years on end can be a risk, but a few nights wouldn't hurt you. You know there are some "radon caves" here in the US that people go to inhale the radon. It's probably safe unless you're the tour guide that has to take people in and out of the cave every day.
Believe me, I checked into these issues rather closely, after I was taken to an onsen in Hokkaido. After soaking a while, I asked why the water was cloudy yellow, and was shocked to hear it was uranium salts. This onsen was famed for its radioactive springwater. I made sure I didn't ingest any water, and showered thoroughly afterwards. Didn't seem to have harmed me any. The real risk of ingesting radioactive particles is more from high-energy isotopes with long halflives, like radium or plutonium. I suppose there's a little bit of those energetic isotopes in unrefined, natural uranium salts. but not enough to do any damage, they'd be in parts per trillions or less. I'm sure I got more gamma radiation during the airline flight back to the US. Unless you work with radioactive substances, your highest routine radiation exposure comes from high-altitude airline flights.

[EZPZ]

Uranium salts make a lot of sense to me now, especially considering the yellow/orange color of the water.

It's also used in some glazes to get a deep rich orangey-red. It was pretty popular with potters from antiquity up until the 50's when people realized its radioactivity.

[Charles]

Uranium salts make a lot of sense to me now, especially considering the yellow/orange color of the water.

It's also used in some glazes to get a deep rich orangey-red. It was pretty popular with potters from antiquity up until the 50's when people realized its radioactivity.

Yeah, I actually own a lot of Fiesta Ware dishes including the notorious "radioactive red," they're highly collectable and worth some money. After years of controversy, the general opinion is that they're safe for everyday use, but not recommended for long-term storage of foods. Dishes with lead glaze are much more dangerous.

BTW, I was astonished to discover, while reading that Fiesta Ware link, that my favorite color, Ivory, is also made with a uranium glaze.

[EZPZ]

Hey that's very cool, I have always wanted to collect some Fiesta ware. Judging by eBay, it is quite the hot commodity.

Although I do not know if I could eat off of it. Not that I fear the radiation, but the color is simply too bright. I wouldn't mind serving it to any guests though.

What got you so interested in collecting?

[Charles]

Hey that's very cool, I have always wanted to collect some Fiesta ware. Judging by eBay, it is quite the hot commodity.

Although I do not know if I could eat off of it. Not that I fear the radiation, but the color is simply too bright. I wouldn't mind serving it to any guests though.

What got you so interested in collecting?

Yeah, that is one of my problems with Fiesta, the colors are so bright that food doesn't necessarily look attractive on it. So I like the subdued ivory, although those pieces are relatively rare because nobody liked it so it never sold very well in the first place. The biggest problem with the Ivory Fiesta is that it gets dark marks from contact with silverware.
I inherited a ton of Fiesta from my mom, she collected TONS of it back when it was cheap, she gave a set of it to each of my 6 siblings. She used to make me drive her around to estate sales and antique shows to collect dishes, and I got fairly interested in it myself. When she died, I inherited her best pieces, the stuff she kept for herself. But I was particularly pissed off when I discovered that one of my sisters swiped one of the most precious pieces, a little medium green fruit bowl that is extremely rare and worth about $2000. If I had known it was worth that much, I would have hidden it.

[EZPZ]

It seems as though you have quite the collection there from the sound of it. Impressive.

The story about your sister reminds me about how my own grand-aunts descended upon the house of my Great-grandfather during his last days in the hospital. They ended up selling off or carting away nearly all of the amazing items he had collected over the years. Family documents and photographs from the world wars, civil war and even going back to the revolution were lost because of their greed and ignorance about their importance. It still angers me when I think about it.

[Captain Japan]

Once Tokyo's spa playground, Atami fading fast
Japan Times

ATAMI, Shizuoka Pref. -- Tamae "Meme" Ono remembers fondly the late 1980s when the hot spring resort of Atami was a glamorous place to be.

"Things were electrifying back in those days. We used to have many customers spend fortunes on geisha -- sometimes one person paid for 10 geisha," the 54-year-old manager of a geisha house said.

Ono, who left her home in Osaka at 15 to become a geisha in Atami, witnessed the once-glitzy city's fall when the economic bubble burst and people began to look elsewhere to spend their holidays.

Only 45 minutes from Tokyo by shinkansen, Atami prospered during the postwar economic growth by attracting honeymooners and group tours, often corporate.

Hotels were constructed along the Pacific coast for the large number of visitors who would spend a night or two at the hot springs resorts. Lavish dinners attended by geisha were one of the attractions.

Atami had approximately 15 million tourists in 1988. Now the figure is half. Now there are only about 250 local geisha, a quarter of the peak time, Ono said.

After the collapse of the bubble economy in the 1990s, the historic, landmark hotels shut down one after the other, leaving an image of a broken city with decayed malls, empty streets and a seedy sex district.

When Mayor Sakae Saito announced Dec. 5 that Atami was in a financial crisis, the city took on the dubious honor of being a strong contender to be the next municipality to go bankrupt after Yubari, Hokkaido, which went bust last June.

In his statement, Saito said Atami would "plunge and be designated for financial reconstruction in the very near future" if the city remained on its present course.

"Atami is facing a crisis," he said....more...

[Captain Japan]

Mayor under fire for fake hot spring gaffe on TV
Mainichi

OTA, Gunma -- Ota Mayor Masayoshi Shimizu has come under fire for remarking in a television program on Thursday that there are fake hot springs in the city, municipal government officials said.

The mayor offered an apology to the tourist association in the popular Yabuzuka Spa area in the city over his comments.

Shimizu made the remark when he appeared in a private TV program over a 15-minute period from 8:15 a.m. on Thursday.

"There are fake hot springs," Shimizu said in response to a question by its host as to whether there are nice hot springs in Ota....more...

[Mulboyne]

I think we've had the chocolate onsen before but I couldn't immediately locate it...

[Behan]

I've been there but I don't think they had the chocolate bath at the time. I remember coffee, wine, and sake. In the winter it's kind of fun getting in and out of the rotenburo.

[Mulboyne]

Poll: 87% of `onsen' not what they seem
Asahi Shimbun

Asahi: 100 hot springs may lose 'onsen' status
[quote]A depopulated community in Yamanashi Prefecture thought it had struck gold when it hit natural spring water. It spent 82 million yen on the project back in 2003. Residents quickly began entertaining dreams of reviving their village, then called Ashigawa, through the tourism they thought would inevitably follow. The dream was short-lived. A year and a half later, the water temperature had fallen. Not only that, the mineral content did not qualify the water as hot spring, either. "We couldn't feel more sorry to have lost the hot spring, which many saw as the key to community revitalization," said an official of Fuefuki city, into which the former Ashigawa village has since merged. At its Ashigawa Fureai Plaza, a facility for elderly people, the symbol for the onsen has been replaced with one denoting a simple public bath.

Ashigawa's experience is not a solitary one. It and 22 hot springs in 10 prefectures failed to meet quality standards in recent re-examinations of their water, an Asahi Shimbun survey found. Experts say a new analysis, made obligatory under a 2007 legal revision of the Hot Springs Law, could result in 100 or more onsen across the nation losing their qualification to operate as such. To qualify as an onsen, the law stipulates that underground water must be 25 degrees or hotter, or contain at least one of 19 designated elements, such as hydrogen ion and sulfur, at certain levels or higher. But "(water temperature and content) could change to a certain degree after some time as a result of an inflow of underground water or volcanic activity," said Yasuo Kanroji, president of the Hot Spring Research Center in Tokyo. The law, enacted in 1948, did not envisage a second analysis once the designation was made.

But that changed after the law was revised in October 2007 following a spate of revelations about noted spas using heated tap water or falsely advertising the water as mineral-rich. Others added bath salts to their water to make it look milky white. Under the revised law, each hot spring must be inspected once every 10 years. Operators are obliged to display the finding. Operators of spas that did not have their water examined after January 2000 must do so by the end of this year. In the Asahi Shimbun survey, 10 of the nation's 47 prefectures reported that at least one onsen no longer met the criteria. The prefectures are Aomori, Akita, Yamagata, Kanagawa, Toyama, Yamanashi, Shiga, Okayama, Hiroshima and Kochi. Of the 23 hot springs that no longer qualify, 15 had seen the mineral content of their water fall below standards]

[Mulboyne]

I think we've had the chocolate onsen before but I couldn't immediately locate it...

It's open again.

[IkemenTommy]

Mr. Hanky, the Christmas Poo..

[IkemenTommy]

It's open again.

And again.
They didn't bother changing the picture shots used from last year either.

[Doctor Stop]

Wait, that's not chocolate!

[Catoneinutica]

There's a "Jackass" bit where Johnny Knoxville goes to Thai restaurants and orders something vegetarian. Then he takes some dogshit out of a little bag and puts it in the food and complains to the waitress that there's "sausage" or something in his food, and really nasty sausage at that. Anyway, I'd like to do that at this place.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

There's a "Jackass" bit where Johnny Knoxville goes to Thai restaurants and orders something vegetarian. Then he takes some dogshit out of a little bag and puts it in the food and complains to the waitress that there's "sausage" or something in his food, and really nasty sausage at that. Anyway, I'd like to do that at this place.

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Actually, when I see this chocolate pool, all I can think about is Augustus Gloop...

[Greji]

And again.
They didn't bother changing the picture shots used from last year either.

I don't like the chocolate onsens, they clog my snorkel...