Kaga Michi Onsen

Kaga Michi Onsen serves the Kaga Onsen zone, one of Japan's most celebrated multi-spa districts comprising four distinct hot spring towns — Yamanaka, Yamashiro, Katayamazu, and Awazu — each with a different mineral character and bathing tradition, collectively known as the Kaga Onsen Goko and considered among the finest spa resort areas on the Japan Sea coast for the combined quality and variety of their thermal waters. Yamanaka Onsen alone carries extraordinary literary distinction as the place where Matsuo Basho spent time on his Oku no Hosomichi journey and composed some of his finest haiku about the mountain gorge setting and the Kakusenkei ravine whose maple-and-cedar scenery he celebrated in verse that elevated Yamanaka's fame across Japanese literary culture. The onsen's siliceous mineral waters, drawing from the Kaga district's exceptional geothermal resources, invite guests to bathe in waters that have been celebrated in Japanese poetry, literature, and aristocratic culture for nearly four centuries.