Sun Olive Onsen

Sun Olive Onsen is one of several named thermal springs on Shodoshima Island in Kagawa Prefecture—Japan's most celebrated olive-growing island, where the mild Seto Inland Sea climate and distinctive soil conditions produce olives of excellent quality in Japan's first commercially successful olive cultivation, established in 1908 when the government sought to diversify agricultural production on this sun-drenched island. The iodine-rich mineral waters carry the marine sedimentary signature of the Seto Inland Sea geology that underlies the island, delivering the antibacterial and skin-conditioning mineral benefits of iodine in a spring set amid the olive groves and small-scale farming landscape that gives Shodoshima its distinctive Mediterranean-reminiscent character. Bathing in Sun Olive's iodine spring water on Japan's olive island creates an unexpected conjunction of European agricultural heritage and Japanese volcanic mineral spring tradition on one of the Inland Sea's most charmingly distinctive islands.