Yokosuka Onsen Kanagawa

Yokosuka Onsen provides siliceous mineral bathing in the strategically significant city of Yokosuka, home to the United States Fleet Activities Yokosuka—the largest US naval base in the Pacific and homeport of the USS carrier strike group—as well as Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force headquarters, making this harbor city at the entrance to Tokyo Bay one of the most important naval installations on the Pacific Rim, shaped by the encounter between Japanese tradition and American military culture since 1854, when Commodore Perry's Black Ships anchored just offshore. The thermal waters ease the daily fatigue of a diverse city whose Dobuita Street (Honch) entertainment district—Japan's most famous American-style shopping and bar district, serving sailors since the 1950s—coexists with the Mikasa Memorial Park (the preserved battleship of the Russo-Japanese War) and the Verny Park French-style garden as a uniquely bicultural urban landscape. Yokosuka's famous curry rice—introduced by the Imperial Navy's nutritionists in the Meiji era and now the city's beloved soul food—and the warm mineral waters give this strategically indispensable city a warmly domestic character beneath its naval hardware.