Togane Onsen

Togane Onsen serves a city on the gently rolling agricultural plain of central Chiba Prefecture, where vast fields of rice, peanuts, and vegetables extend toward the Pacific coast in one of Japan's most productive lowland farming regions, the Kujukuri Plain whose long straight coastline — stretching nearly 60 kilometers without interruption — is one of the longest sandy beaches in Japan, popular with surfers who ride the consistent swells coming in from the open Pacific. The surrounding agricultural landscape of Togane has supplied Tokyo's markets with fresh produce since the Edo period, when the fertile Shimofusa plain was recognized as among the most productive grain-growing land within supply distance of the capital. The onsen's siliceous mineral waters, drawn from the deep Kanto sedimentary aquifer, provide warm therapeutic bathing for the farming community of a city whose flat, open landscape connects the productivity of the land to the constancy of the Pacific horizon.