Yamanaka Onsen

Arriving by bus from Kaga Onsen Station, the road follows the Daishoji River into the mountains and the valley tightens into the Kakusenkei Gorge just before the town begins. The gorge is narrow and dramatic, with mossy basalt walls dropping forty meters to the river below, and a walking path follows both banks between Korogi Bridge and Kurotani Bridge for just over a kilometer. The haiku poet Matsuo Basho walked this gorge in 1689 and wrote that he found the waters here more beautiful than Arima and Kinosaki, the two most celebrated springs of his era. The poem he left behind, about not needing to pick chrysanthemums when the waters already carry their fragrance, is carved into a stone at the gorge entrance.

The spring water at Yamanaka is a sodium bicarbonate type that emerges at around 48 degrees Celsius. In the bath it is colorless and completely clear, with a smooth, faintly alkaline feel that the locals describe as bijin-no-yu, beauty water, because of the way it leaves skin soft. It has almost no distinctive smell, which makes it accessible even to people who find the sulfur-heavy springs in other parts of Japan overpowering. The absence of drama in the water itself means the experience is defined entirely by the setting and the quality of the soak, both of which hold up well.

Kiku-no-yu, the public bathhouse at the center of town, is named after the chrysanthemum in Basho's poem. The building itself is modern but sits on the plaza where the original communal bath has stood for centuries, and the atmosphere inside is functional and honest, local people and travelers in the same water together. Going early in the morning, before the ryokan guests have woken up, gives you a quiet version of the place. The gorge walk works well either before or after a bath, and in any season the combination of moving water, old stone, and tall forest is exactly the kind of thing that justifies a long journey.

Yamanaka is one of three Kaga onsen towns, along with Yamashiro and Katayamazu. Traveling between them by bus is easy enough for a full day, but Yamanaka has the gorge, which the others do not, and that single geographical feature gives it a quality the neighboring towns cannot match.