Gakuto Onsen

Gakuto Onsen is situated in Matsue, the capital of Shimane Prefecture, a historic castle city on the shores of Lake Shinji that was made world-famous by the Anglo-Greek writer Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo), who settled here in 1890 and wrote extensively about the city's supernatural legends, traditional festivals, and the misty lake landscape that inspired his most celebrated works on Japanese culture. The siliceous thermal waters here complement the rich cultural atmosphere of a city whose Matsue Castle — one of Japan's only surviving original feudal castles — reflects in the moat canals traversed by sightseeing boats amid a landscape of samurai residences, tea ceremony halls, and the ghost stories Hearn gathered from local traditions. Bathing at Gakuto Onsen in this city of legends and lake mists provides an atmospheric and culturally layered spa experience in one of Japan's most literarily significant and romantically mysterious provincial capitals.