Our ryokan is beautiful. The interior downstairs is cool and just-slightly dim. Incense is vague in the air like a half-remembered conversation, and the atmosphere is calm and precise.

We left last night's business hotel and brought our bags over here at 11am, then returned at 2.30pm to check in. The kindly manager speaks no English, but is extremely welcoming and unerringly polite. She wears an apron with an old-style, 'here there be dragons'-esque world map emblazoned on it in tones of indigo and yellow parchment.

Our ten tatami-mat room is - and I cannot emphasise this enough - divine. Utterly special and magical. The space smells sweetly like green tea icecream when we step in (wearing houseslippers - oh no! This is THE cardinal sin one can commit ...).

The mats are robust and cleanly springy underfoot, the individual fibres of the weave addictively pleasant on one's soles.

I thought, just from the pics of tatami-mat rooms I'd seen online, that a space like this would feel bare and barren. Instead, it feels full of solid, cosy comfort.

The room is almost completely denuded, save for our soft, folded futon beds and their dove-white comforters. There's also a dark-stained wooden table that sits low to the ground, accompanied by two pillow-seats directly on the floor. A miniature fridge hums softly to itself in a corner, next to a low dressing table and mirror. Another corner is home to a small, black television.

The central table bears hot water in a tan flask and two porcelain tea cups on bamboo saucers alongside sencha green tea and two mysterious packages. The mystery packages turn out to be possibly the most delicious biscuits ever devised - light and crunchy like french langues de chat, but tasting of caramel and studded with peanuts.

Here in the ryokan, bathing is shared and traditional. Nervous about etiquette and the communality, I made Andrew go first.

He came back beet-red, gave me the lowdown, and declared the experience fantastic. I put on the glorious blue and white cotton robe, fixed it closed with a brilliant orange sash, and set out for the ground-floor bathrooms, sliding along in my regulation brown vinyl house-slippers.

Downstairs, I slid open the rickety wooden door with its opaque panels, and entered the small changing space. Slatted bamboo mats and some fluffy terry towelling rugs covered the floor. On some shelves sat small, white plastic 'washing baskets'. Into one of these went my robe and my towel. Utterly naked, I slid open the door to the 'wet room'.

No one else was there! (relieving and disappointing simultaneously ...)

The room was square, steamy, and covered in tiny mosaic-style tiles. It looked basic and welcoming. One wall was lined with five small handheld shower sets, and tiny plastic stools and water basins were lying nearby. Prepped by Drew, I made sure to disable the shower's safety mechanism so as to allow the water to skyrocket up to 40c as a means of adjusting myself to the extreme temperatures in the plunge bath itself. I felt my skin start to burn a little already, and the blood rose in my face.

Washed and rinsed and cooked like a goose, I got off my plastic seat and stepped into the large, low pool of water. It was a tiled bath large enough for at least eight or nine bathers, maybe more if squeezed thigh-to-thigh.

The water looked a light, mineral aqua, but by god it was HOT. I had read that the surface of the water felt the hottest, and thus that entering the bath was the most intense part. Once in, my sources continued, moving one's body at all would make the water seem hotter, so the idea would be to remain completely still and 'just relax'.

And you know what? I actually did. The faded red thermometer submerged in the water with me said the temperature was almost 44c. My skin turned the colour of Christmas ham, and my pulse felt like it was about to take leave of my body, exiting via the temples in my forehead. But it was FANTASTIC!

There's something incredibly soothing about being steeped up to your neck like a fine tea being drawn. It's liberating feeling weightless in water so hot it immobilises you, drinking in steam like it's air.

I got out feeling steamy and heart-palpitationy and supple. A hotter, dizzier version of yoga, really. With water.

One short burst of cooling shower water, and a good towel-down later, I put my robe back on and became just a blur of indigo cotton, red face and lobster feet, as I slipped my way back to bed.