Kinkasan Onsen

Kinkasan Onsen is a geothermal facility associated with Kinkasan Island, a sacred offshore island in the Pacific Ocean south of Ishinomaki city in Miyagi Prefecture, Tōhoku — a heavily forested island without permanent civilian habitation that is home to the Koganeyama Shrine (one of the Tōhoku region's most sacred Shinto sites) and a large population of wild sika deer and Japanese macaque monkeys that live completely unfenced and unmanaged in the island's primary forest. Shinto tradition holds that Kinkasan is one of Japan's three most sacred sites associated with wealth and financial fortune, attracting thousands of pilgrims annually who make the ferry journey from Ishinomaki to pray at the golden mountain shrine and receive the blessings of the deities enshrined there. The siliceous thermal waters here provide bathing in one of Japan's most spiritually charged island environments, where sacred deer wander freely among ancient camphor trees and the Pacific Ocean stretches away in every direction from this powerful Shinto sanctuary.