Iiyama Onsen

Iiyama Onsen—Good Mountain Spring—in Hadano City, Kanagawa Prefecture, takes its name from the felicitous mountain name Iiyama (good/auspicious mountain), a designation that reflects the Japanese tradition of attributing positive, beneficent qualities to the mountain landscapes that shelter thermal springs and provide the geological context for their emergence. Located in the Hadano area near the Tanzawa Mountains—the coastal mountain range that separates Kanagawa Prefecture's Pacific coastal lowland from the Sagami plain and provides the most accessible mountain hiking terrain for the Tokyo and Yokohama metropolitan populations—this sulfurous spring serves as a thermal complement to the hiking and outdoor recreation traditions of the Tanzawa highland. The sulfurous waters carry the volcanic intensity of the Tanzawa geological system in a spring whose good-mountain name promises the auspicious geological gift of a volcanic mineral soak within reach of Japan's largest urban conurbation, in a long thermal tradition.