Lake Suwa

Lake Suwa sits in a basin at 759 m, shallow (no deeper than about 7 m) and about 16 km around, with the towns of Suwa, Shimosuwa and Okaya pressed against its shores. Its single outflow, through the Kamaguchi sluice in Okaya, becomes the Tenryu River. Most visitors arrive at Kami-Suwa Station, which has a footbath right on the platform, and walk about 10 minutes to the lakeside park. Kami-Suwa's hot spring water feeds hotels along the shore and Katakura-kan, a public bath in a listed building with a standing pool 1.1 m deep. The old geyser centre no longer erupts the way it once did. A path for walking and cycling runs around the whole lake. The big night is August 15, when the Suwako Matsuri lake fireworks draw several hundred thousand people; the shells launched from the water are the speciality. Seats along the shore are paid and sold by online lottery in late spring, hotels book out months ahead, and the trains afterwards are packed. On most other summer evenings there is a short show at about 20:30. In winter the lake used to freeze and crack into ridges called omiwatari, read as the god of the Upper Shrine crossing to the Lower; the last one was in 2018. The four shrines of Suwa Taisha are nearby.