Hakone Motoyu Onsen

Hakone Motoyu Onsen is located in Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, in the Hakone caldera's volcanic landscape, where 'motoyu' (original hot spring) designates one of the historically documented sources of Hakone's exceptional geothermal waters — a tradition of thermal bathing that has attracted travellers along the Tōkaidō highway since the Edo Period when Hakone post towns served as rest stops for samurai, merchants, and pilgrims travelling between Edo and Kyoto. The sulphurous thermal waters emerge from the volcanic geology of the Kamiyama dome — Hakone's last-erupted volcanic peak — drawing mineral richness from the deep volcanic plumbing system whose surface expression includes the dramatically steaming and eerily coloured Owakudani crater valley. The Hakone Open Air Museum, Hakone Museum of Art, the Pola Museum of Art, and the Lalique Museum — four world-class art facilities concentrated in this volcanic spa town — make Hakone one of the rare destinations where some of the finest art collections in Japan can be explored between sulphurous mineral baths in the shadow of Mount Fuji.