Advice a person to be bewildered bathing with the others
Shy person believe that you should take a bath only by yourself.
But I don’t think you need to think about it too much. Because you just do not have an experience in taking a Japanese hot spring.
Now Yu-pon can advise a way to do it to people who deny act of taking onsen with others. Okeydokey, very easy thing! You can take onsen alone if you stay at the ryokan room with open onsen bath attached or you reserve an onsen bath just for yourself to pay by the hour.
Room charges with open bath is much higher but an onsen bathing paid by the hour is available at most of the onsen ryokan with a generally accepted price
Usually the size of the baths and the bath rooms of the onsen ryokan are very large.
Due to the distance kept between bathers being wider often times you may not feel bothered by the people surrounding you. Besides cloud of steam usually rises in the air of onsen bathroom which covers you from the other’s sight. Japanese traveler would prefer to take onsen either in very early hours like 6-7 o’clock in the morning or before 9 o’clock in the evening. So you have a good chance of being alone if you avoid this time zone.
Uncle Nick told me about a case he had experienced at the open bath in Kurama Mountain. Kurama is part of Kyoto City and nearby that a lot of Europeans choose to stay at Kurama Onsen Ryokan. When Uncle Nick went there and entered an onsen bath, he felt some funny atmosphere being over there.
In the bath he saw seven or eight Europeans quietly sitting in a row. They were sitting in hot spring looking up a shining moon as if they were taking Zen meditations.
They seemed to have thought that bathing in onsen is the same thing as taking Zen training and they had to follow the manner of practicing Zen meditation.
Enjoying the onsen would not require ban on talking or keeping the silence. The principle of onsen bathing lies in relaxing yourself. But it is not having a party like buzz in the Onsen place neither. And Uncle Nick told me that he has never seen such a happy face when a Chinese daddy happened to be playing with his little daughter in a huge onsen area of Noboribetu (In Japan children under seven are permitted to take bath with parents). In onsen bathing you are supposed to have a good relaxing time and a good communication with people you like.