Wakura Onsen sits at the base of the Noto Peninsula, where the hills of Ishikawa Prefecture slope down to meet the calm waters of Nanao Bay. The hot springs are unusual in Japan because they emerge directly beside -- and partially beneath -- the sea. The thermal water is sodium chloride-rich, drawn up from deep volcanic sources, and reaches the surface at high temperatures. A public bathhouse in the town center offers the full experience for a small fee, but the simplest way to understand Wakura is to find one of the ashiyu scattered through the streets -- free public foot baths where locals and visitors alike sit on stone benches, roll up their trouser legs, and soak their feet in steaming water while watching fishing boats cross the bay. Across from one of the larger ryokan complexes, a hiroba -- a public square -- features a hot spring-fed fountain, a small shrine, and a park shaded by pines.

The earliest written references to Wakura Onsen appear in documents from the Heian period, roughly the ninth and tenth centuries, when the springs were already known as a place of healing. For most of their long history, however, the hot springs remained difficult to reach -- a remote coastal village at the end of a peninsula that juts into the Sea of Japan. That changed in the Meiji era, when the construction of the Nanao Line railroad connected the peninsula to Kanazawa and the wider Japanese rail network. Wakura Onsen Station, just five minutes by car from the resort town, brought the first wave of modern tourism. Grand ryokan rose along the bayfront. Among them, the Kagaya ryokan became one of the most celebrated traditional inns in all of Japan, a 20-story complex with more than 200 rooms and panoramic views across Nanao Bay, regularly hosting members of the imperial family.

On January 1, 2024, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck the Noto Peninsula. The shaking devastated communities from Wajima to Suzu and inflicted severe damage on Wakura Onsen. Of the resort town's 20 hot spring accommodations, most were forced to close. The Kagaya ryokan, the grand flagship of Wakura, sustained structural damage that left it inoperable. Plans were announced in late 2024 to build a new facility designed by architect Kengo Kuma on nearby land along the bay, though the existing building would ultimately face demolition. By late 2025, five of the 20 inns had reopened, and the town was making steady progress toward recovery. The hot springs themselves continued to flow -- the geological forces that created the thermal water predated human settlement by millennia and outlasted the earthquake just as they had outlasted centuries of war, isolation, and change.

Even before the earthquake, Wakura Onsen was never about spectacle. There are no towering temples, no famous gardens, no bullet-train connections. The appeal is simpler: hot water, fresh seafood from Nanao Bay, tatami-floored rooms where sliding screens open onto the water, and an unhurried pace that the Noto Peninsula seems to impose on everything within its reach. The Kado Isaburo Museum preserves local cultural artifacts. The Noto Railway, a small local line, connects Wakura to Anamizu further up the peninsula. Route 249, the national road that winds around the entire coast of Noto, passes through town. Visitors who come here are not passing through on the way to somewhere else. They have come for the water, the bay, and the particular quiet of a place that has been doing one thing -- offering hot springs and hospitality -- for twelve centuries.