Spent a good half hour or so browsing my my local neighborhood drug store. Ended up buying some corn pads for Rachel's feet, a 12 pack of mini hand warmers, a 5-pack of hot bath salts containing ceramides, collagen and chili pepper extract, and some adhesive capsicin pads to stick on the bottom of my feet before I go to bed. Supposedly they draw impurities out of the body and help you wake up feeling refreshed. Think that's a bit much to hope for for 98 yen (about 80 cents), but they looked intriguing.
I spend a lot of time at the drug store browsing the bath section.There is such a wide selection of salts, powders and potions to add to your bath. Some of them claim to recreate the composition of famous natural hot springs baths. Others just smell nice and make the water pretty colors.
My favorite is the Bub series by Kao, the same company that's responsible for those Biore pore cleansing strips. Bub is kind of like an alka seltzer for your bath. It's a big cube that you drop into the tub which then fizzes itself to nothingness while releasing a pleasant color and aroma. They have cool selections like cherry blossom (pink), green tea (green, duh), Japanese cypress (yellow), chammomile (yellowish green), lavender (guess), and maybe yuzu or some other sort of Japanese citrus fruit (yellow). The nightly bath is just doesn't feel right without a little Bub. But tonight I'm going to try the one with the pepper extract just for a change of pace.