Shizuoka Arai Onsen

Arai (now Kosai), in the western Shizuoka Prefecture on Lake Hamanako and the Pacific coast, was one of the most important checkpoint stations (sekisho) on the historic Tokaido highway where all travellers between Edo and Kyoto were strictly examined — a legacy preserved in the Arai Sekisho historic site museum — and the western shore of Lake Hamanako, one of Japan's largest brackish coastal lagoons, where fresh eel cultivation and the traditional lake fishing culture have sustained the community for centuries. Shizuoka Arai Onsen draws on sodium and bicarbonate thermal waters from the geological resources of the Hamanako coastal zone, offering restorative baths in a historic checkpoint town whose extraordinary Tokaido heritage, the Lake Hamanako eel cuisine culture, and the coastal lagoon scenery create a richly layered historical and culinary spa setting. The Arai Sekisho historic checkpoint museum, the Lake Hamanako cycling trail along the lagoon's reed-bed shores past eel aquaculture farms, and the Enshuhama sand barrier beach with views across the Pacific horizon make Arai an outstandingly historically significant and culinarily distinctive spa destination on the western Shizuoka coast.