Karuizawa

Steam rises in ethereal ribbons from the Yubatake — the “hot water field” — where scalding, mineral-rich water cascades over wooden channels before being cooled for the town’s myriad baths. Kusatsu Onsen, nestled in the volcanic highlands of Gunma, has drawn healers and pleasure-seekers for over a millennium with waters famed for their acidity and purported ability to cure everything but lovesickness. The town’s rhythm is set by the ancient ritual of yumomi: local women in traditional happi coats stir the steaming pools with long wooden paddles, singing folk songs that echo off the surrounding cedars. Whether you soak in a public rotenburo under a canopy of stars or retreat to a ryokan’s private onsen, the experience is a masterclass in Japanese bathing culture — communal, ceremonial, and profoundly restorative.

Standing as a monumental testament to Japan’s meteoric leap into the industrial age, the Tomioka Silk Mill unfurls across the banks of the Kabura River like a carefully preserved chapter of living history. Established in 1872 under the Meiji government’s rallying cry of “Enrich the Country, Strengthen the Military,” this sprawling complex was the nation’s first state-owned, modern silk-reeling factory, designed to catapult Japanese raw silk onto the world stage. Walking beneath the soaring timber trusses of the East and West Cocoon Warehouses—structures that marry French colonial brickwork with traditional Japanese joinery—one feels the pulse of a society in radical transformation. The rhythmic clatter of the automatic reeling machines, imported from France and still demonstrated today, echoes the labor of the young women, the “factory girls,” whose dexterous fingers spun the threads that financed a modern navy and railway network. Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2014, Tomioka is not merely a factory tour; it is an immersion into the birth of modern Japan, where the scent of mulberry leaves and the cool darkness of the brick storehouses conjure the sheer physicality of an industrial revolution woven from silk.

Perched on a cool plateau at the foot of Mount Asama, Karuizawa has been Japan’s premier summer refuge since the Meiji era, when missionaries and diplomats built Western-style villas amid the larch and birch forests. Today, the town blends that cosmopolitan heritage with contemporary chic: the Old Karuizawa Ginza-dori promenades past artisan bakeries, boutiques, and the historic Mampei Hotel, while the vast Karuizawa Prince Shopping Plaza draws day-trippers from Tokyo. Nature remains the protagonist—Shiraito Falls threads white ribbons over volcanic rock, and the Kumoba Pond mirrors the changing canopy. In winter, the resort transforms into a ski destination with powder slopes just an hour from the capital by shinkansen.