Yame Onsen

Yame Onsen is found in Yame, a city in the Chikugo region of Fukuoka Prefecture celebrated throughout Japan as a center of two exceptional artisanal traditions — the production of premium gyokuro green tea, whose cultivation in Yame's shaded highland gardens using the tana covering technique produces one of Japan's finest and most delicately flavored tea varieties, and the creation of Yame lacquerware (Yame shikki) whose distinctive red and black finishes applied to locally crafted wooden forms represent one of Kyushu's most enduring craft traditions dating back to the Edo period. The annual Yame Lantern Festival, where thousands of traditional andon paper lanterns illuminate the historic old town, has become one of Fukuoka Prefecture's most atmospheric autumn events, drawing visitors to experience the soft glow of this centuries-old illumination tradition against Yame's preserved merchant townscape. The onsen here provide silica-rich mineral bathing in a city whose extraordinary craft heritage gives it a cultural distinctiveness rare among Fukuoka's smaller cities.