Shari Onsen Hokkaido

Shari Onsen Hokkaido is a thermal bathing facility in Shari Town, the southern gateway to the Shiretoko Peninsula in the Okhotsk Subprefecture of Hokkaido, one of the world's most extraordinary designated wilderness areas recognized as UNESCO World Heritage in 2005 for the exceptional interaction of marine and terrestrial ecosystems on a peninsula where the drift ice of the Sea of Okhotsk nourishes the ocean food chain from phytoplankton through salmon to brown bear and Steller's sea eagle in one of the most complete and productive cold-water marine-terrestrial ecosystem chains documented anywhere on earth. The Shiretoko Peninsula, meaning the end of the earth in Ainu language, extends northward into the Sea of Okhotsk as one of Japan's most pristine remaining wilderness areas, where road access ends at the Shiretoko Goko (Five Lakes) nature area and the rest of the peninsula can only be entered by boat or on guided backcountry hikes through some of the densest brown bear habitat in Japan. The chloride thermal spring waters of Shari Town provide the thermal wellness gateway to the extraordinary Shiretoko wilderness, offering visitors a comfortable recovery base after wildlife watching excursions, drift ice cruises, and the wilderness hiking that makes the Shiretoko Peninsula one of the most compelling and least-visited UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Japanese archipelago.