Urakawa Onsen Hokkaido

Urakawa Onsen Hokkaido is a thermal facility in Urakawa Town in the Hidaka Subprefecture of southern Hokkaido, a coastal community on the Pacific shore of Hokkaido's Erimo Cape area that is universally recognized throughout Japan as the center of Japan's thoroughbred horse breeding industry, where the temperate Pacific climate, rich pasture grasses, and the long tradition of equestrian culture concentrated in the Hidaka region produce the vast majority of Japan's racehorses in a landscape of elegant stud farms, racing horse training facilities, and the open-paddock freedom of a genuine horse-country landscape that evokes comparisons to Kentucky or Newmarket in the green hills above the Pacific coast. The broader Urakawa and Hidaka coastline faces the dramatic Cape Erimo peninsula, where the windswept headland jutting into the Pacific is famous as the windiest inhabited point in Japan, where violent storms, churning Pacific seas, and the spectacular gathering of harbour seals on the cape's offshore rocks create a landscape of elemental coastal drama at the southeastern tip of Hokkaido. The chloride thermal spring waters here warm jockeys, stable hands, and visitors to the horse country of the Hidaka coast in a community where the equestrian tradition of thoroughbred breeding represents one of the most distinctive and economically significant aspects of Hokkaido's agricultural and sporting heritage.