Teshikaga Onsen Hokkaido

Teshikaga Onsen Hokkaido is a thermal bathing community in Teshikaga Town in the southern reaches of the Akan-Mashu National Park, serving the Kawayu Onsen resort district and providing access to two of Japan's most extraordinary volcanic caldera lakes — Lake Mashu, enclosed within its caldera rim with no surface inflow or outflow, whose water clarity has been measured as the clearest natural lake water in the world with horizontal visibility of up to 40 meters, and Lake Kussharo, Japan's largest crater lake where warm volcanic vents heat the lakeshore sediments sufficiently to allow outdoor bathing in the shallow sandy areas in a natural phenomenon unique in the Japanese archipelago. The Kawayu Onsen thermal field of boiling acid sulfate springs and steaming yellow-stained vents represents one of the most accessible active hydrothermal areas in Hokkaido, and the Kawayu area's Ainu cultural heritage connects to the broader Akan-Mashu indigenous history of the people who have inhabited this extraordinary volcanic landscape for thousands of years. The sodium-bicarbonate thermal spring waters of Teshikaga's community baths serve visitors exploring the most dramatically scenic cluster of volcanic lakes in the Japanese archipelago, where the supernatural clarity of Lake Mashu and the natural hot sand bathing of Lake Kussharo combine with Ainu cultural richness and the therapeutic mineral springs of Kawayu in one of Japan's most geologically and spiritually charged thermal spa landscapes.