Mutsu Shimokita Onsen

Mutsu Shimokita Onsen is located in Mutsu City on the Shimokita Peninsula, the axe-shaped promontory at the northern tip of Aomori Prefecture that is dominated by Osorezan, Mount Fear, the most uncanny and otherworldly religious site in Japan, where a volcanic crater lake of deep teal-blue water surrounded by sulfurous vents, barren gravel fields, and grotesque geological formations serves as a portal to the Buddhist underworld in a setting of visceral geological drama unmatched anywhere else in the archipelago. The mountain is the home of the famous itako, blind female mediums who summon the spirits of the deceased to deliver messages to bereaved family members in a practice that draws thousands of mourners and curiosity-seekers to the annual summer Osorezan Taisai festival. The thermal spring waters here, close to the volcanic energies of one of Japan's most spiritually charged and geologically spectacular sacred mountains, offer a bathing experience that carries the weight of the uncanny and the resonance of Japan's deepest traditions of contact with the realm of the dead.