Oketo Onsen

Oketo Onsen is located in Oketo, a small town in the Okhotsk Subprefecture of northeastern Hokkaido renowned within Japan's horse racing world as a major center of thoroughbred breeding — the Oketo Horse Ranch raises racehorses for the Japan Racing Association on the broad plains of northern Hokkaido, where the cool clean air, vast open grasslands, and volcanic mineral-rich pastures are considered ideal for producing champion bloodlines. The surrounding landscape of wide-open agricultural plains, distant volcanic peaks, and cold northern skies embodies the spacious frontier character of Hokkaido's least-developed northeastern territories. The onsen here provide warming mineral bathing in a community whose world-class equestrian heritage coexists with the quiet agricultural rhythms of northern Hokkaido, far from the tourist concentrations of the island's south and west.