Akita Onsen Satomi

Akita Onsen Satomi is a thermal bathing facility in Akita City, the prefectural capital of Akita Prefecture on the Japan Sea coast of northern Honshu, a city that proudly celebrates its most famous cultural events in the magnificent Kanto Matsuri summer festival, in which performers balance impossibly long bamboo poles hung with dozens of lit paper lanterns on their foreheads, hips, and shoulders in a demonstration of extraordinary skill and balance that draws enormous crowds each August to the lantern-illuminated city center. Akita City is also celebrated as the hometown of the Akita Inu dog breed and maintains a strong sense of local cultural identity through its distinctive cuisine of kiritanpo (roasted rice tubes in hot pot), sake production using Akita's premium rice and pure snowmelt water, and the Akita bijin (beautiful women) cultural tradition that associates the region's soft water and mountain air with exceptional feminine beauty. The mild bicarbonate thermal waters here provide comfortable bathing in the heart of a city that balances its deep pride in traditional culture with its role as the administrative and commercial center of one of Japan's most distinctive and proudly regional prefectures.