Rendaiji Onsen Shimoda

Rendaiji Onsen Shimoda is located near Shimoda, the historic port city at the southern tip of the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture — a city of profound significance in the history of Japan's opening to the West, where Commodore Matthew Perry's second fleet anchored in 1854 to negotiate the Convention of Kanagawa that ended Japan's 250-year isolation policy, and where the first American consul Townsend Harris established his residence at the Gyokusenji Temple in 1856. The chloride-rich thermal waters of Rendaiji emerge from the intensely geothermally active geology of the Izu Peninsula's southern volcanic zone, just kilometres from the submarine volcano Shin-Iwo-Jima whose activity can sometimes be observed offshore, providing warm saline mineral bathing in a setting charged with both geothermal energy and world-historical significance. The beaches of Shirahama and Sotoura, the Perry Road of 19th-century Western-style buildings, and the Rendaiji hot spring's therapeutic waters combine to make the southern Izu Peninsula one of Japan's most historically layered and naturally beautiful coastal hot spring destinations.