Bathe in chocolate this Valentine's Day

By Toshi Maeda

TOKYO, Feb 13 (Reuters Life!) - A Japanese spa is offering the perfect aphrodisiac for Valentine's Day -- chocolate baths.

Those who just can't get enough of the sweet stuff can immerse themselves in water mixed with cacao and fragrant bath powders. Twice a day, staff pour creamy chocolate over the bathers, who smear it over the bodies or lick it off.

"This bath is my Valentines Day gift for him this year," said Mayumi Uekusa, who travelled more than two hours with her boyfriend to the Yunessun spa in Hakone, north of Tokyo, to soak in a mixture of warm water, cacao and aromatic bath powders.

"Life ain't as sweet as this bath, darling," quipped her boyfriend Yuichi Omata. Japanese women have long been the ones to give their guys gifts on Valentine's Day.

While couples shared romance in the bath, families with grandmothers and babies in tow also spread chocolate over their faces and bodies. Everybody wore a bathing suit.

Confectioner Morozoff Ltd. is widely credited with introducing Valentine's Day to the country in a 1936 advertisement for chocolates. Some two decades later, Mary Chocolate Ltd used Valentine's Day as a sales promotion in what is generally seen as the first such commercial endeavour.

Now in Japan, as in many countries, chocolate and romance go hand in hand and for many lovers, Valentine's Day just wouldn't be the same without these sweet treats.

The Aztecs believed chocolate was an aphrodisiac that invigorated men and made women less inhibited, and when it came to Europe, it quickly became the perfect gift to inspire lust.