Muko Onsen

Muko Onsen is a community thermal bath in the small city of Muko, the least-populated city in Kyoto Prefecture and one of Japan's most compact urban municipalities, positioned in the southwestern Kyoto basin between the ancient Katsura River and the Hankyu Kyoto railway line in a city whose modest scale contrasts with its proximity to some of Japan's most important cultural and historical sites. The mineral thermal waters provide sodium chloride immersion for a local residential community whose city of just 55,000 inhabitants maintains a quiet sense of neighborhood solidarity unusual in the otherwise highly urban Kyoto-Osaka corridor. Muko's proximity to the Katsura Imperial Villa, the Matsunoo Taisha sake shrine, and the bamboo landscapes of Arashiyama makes this small city's neighborhood onsen an unpretentious but geographically privileged thermal retreat at the western edge of the ancient Japanese capital.