Sasebo Onsen Nagasaki Huis Ten Bosch

Sasebo Onsen Nagasaki Huis Ten Bosch is a hot spring facility associated with the Huis Ten Bosch resort complex in Sasebo City, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan's largest theme park by area and one of its most extraordinary tourism concepts — an entire Dutch town of windmills, canals, 17th-century architecture, and tulip gardens built on reclaimed land in the Omura Bay to celebrate the historic Dutch-Japanese relationship that made the Netherlands Japan's only Western trading partner during the 250 years of Edo isolation, when Dutch merchants confined to the tiny artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor transmitted the scientific and cultural knowledge of the Western world to Japan's intellectually curious scholars. The surrounding Sasebo area encompasses the spectacular Kujukushima (99 Islands), an archipelago of densely forested granite islets in the Saikai National Park where sea kayaking, glass-bottom boat tours, and sunset cruises reveal one of western Japan's most beautiful island chain landscapes, and Sasebo's American naval base adds yet another layer of cultural complexity to this historically multicultural Kyushu port city. The sodium-bicarbonate thermal spring waters here provide wellness facilities within the broader Huis Ten Bosch resort complex, where the history of Dutch-Japanese cultural exchange and the natural beauty of Sasebo's island-studded bay create an unusually rich context for therapeutic bathing.