Minami Ashigara Onsen

Minami Ashigara Onsen is a thermal facility in Minami-Ashigara city in Kanagawa Prefecture, at the foot of the Ashigara Pass in the westernmost part of the prefecture where the Oyama mountain range meets the Fuji-Hakone volcanic zone — a landscape of volcanic ridges, cedar forests, and the distant profile of Mount Fuji visible on clear days above the Ashigara Plain. The Ashigara area is famous as the homeland of the legendary Kintoki (Kintarō), the supernatural hero of Japanese folklore born in these mountains and raised by a mountain witch, who grew up to become one of the retainers of the warrior Minamoto no Yorimitsu — a myth embedded in the landscape of waterfalls, cedar forests, and rugged mountain trails that surround the onsen. The siliceous waters of Minami Ashigara Onsen provide restorative bathing in a mountain landscape charged with both volcanic geological energy and the folkloric imagination that has made the Ashigara highlands a place of legend in the Japanese cultural heritage.