Kawachi Onsen

Kawachi Onsen—the River Basin Spring—takes its name from the kawachi, the inner valley basin where a river runs enclosed by surrounding hills, a topographic naming that describes the sheltered, enclosed character of the spring's geological setting within Shizuoka Prefecture's complex river-valley landscape. Shizuoka Prefecture combines some of Japan's most dramatic natural geography—Mt. Fuji, the Southern Alps, the Suruga Bay deep trench, and the Izu Peninsula's volcanic coast—with a rich tea cultivation tradition, the Tokugawa Ieyasu birthplace at Hamamatsu, and the Miho-no-Matsubara pine grove that UNESCO protects as part of the Mt. Fuji World Heritage property. Thermal spring water from this river basin setting adds a mineral soak in the local thermal tradition to a prefecture whose natural landscape offers the traveler some of Japan's most diverse and dramatic scenery.