Katayamazu Onsen

Coming from Kaga Station on the Hokuriku Shinkansen, you travel by bus for about twenty minutes through flat rice country before the road swings south and Lake Shibayama appears through the windshield, low and silver and hemmed in by low forested hills. Katayamazu Onsen lines the northern shore of the lake, a compact strip of traditional inns and bathhouses that face the water across a narrow promenade. The lake is not large, but it does something unusual. Locals say the surface changes color seven times a day as the light shifts and the wind moves across it, going from pale grey to deep blue to a flat copper at sunset. A fountain in the middle of the lake fires up thirteen times daily, a thin white column visible from almost any outdoor bath in town.

The spring itself was discovered by accident in 1653 when the daimyo of Daishoji, Maeda Toshiaki, was falconing near the lakeshore and noticed birds congregating over a patch of open water. Closer investigation revealed hot springs seeping up from the lake bottom. Access to those springs required more than two centuries of patience, and it was not until a major land reclamation project partially filled in the lake that the water became properly accessible for bathing. The spring is a sodium chloride type, and the water it produces is clear and noticeably heavy, with a mild saltiness you can taste if you get a mouthful. On your skin it feels dense and warming, the kind of heat that does not let go quickly.

The cultural artifact that catches you off guard in Katayamazu is a wooden building called Hanayakata, constructed in 1920 as a practice hall for the geisha and maiko who once entertained guests in the town's larger inns. No geisha remain in Katayamazu today, and the hall has been converted into a workshop space for visitors interested in tofu making or cloth dyeing, but the building itself is beautiful. The cypress floors and low practice mirrors speak to a period when this lakeshore town was considerably more fashionable than it is now.

From the outdoor baths of most hotels here you look directly out at Lake Shibayama and, on clear days, at the sharp white shape of Mount Hakusan rising behind the lake to the southwest. The Hokuriku coast gets its share of winter snow, and from a hot outdoor pool with snowflakes falling into the steaming water and the fountain catching what light there is in the middle of the silver lake, Katayamazu becomes a different place entirely. Come in December if you can manage it.