After the Chichu Art Museum visit, we went to experience the “Cultural Melting Bath: Project for Naoshima (文化大混浴)” by Cai Guo-Qiang. It is one of the outdoor works at the Benesse House Museum and you could only experience on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays at 4pm for an hour by reservation only. Plus, you need to be a hotel guest at Benesse House, which we stayed at one of the Museum rooms (it is IN the museum! You can walk around the museum in the middle of the night!) and so I was lucky to be able to enjoy this work. And yes, this artwork allows the visitors to take an actual bath! (Please have your bathing suit ready.)

Taifu rocks from China and an American-made Jacuzzi tab are arranged according to Feng Shui, and five kinds of medical herbs added to the Jacuzzi water.

It’s a cultural melting bath so you will be in the Jacuzzi with some other people (6 people max.)…

The square looking thing is the Jacuzzi tab…

A view from the tab…

and you can walk right to the beach…

A view from the beach…

It was actually 90-something degrees out and so I thought we would pass out from the heat in the hot tab, but it was actually a nice and cool experience. Being in the Jacuzzi was nicer than being outside, which our head was… I think this would be perfect in Fall or Spring :)

There is another artwork in Naoshima called “I Love Yu” by Shinro Ohtake that I couldn’t go this time, but it’s a public bath house — the whole bath house is an art! and of course you can take bath. You can enjoy the artwork from outside, from inside and from the bath tab. I must go next time… :)