Wakura Onsen

Wakura is a seaside onsen on Nanao Bay, at the base of the Noto Peninsula. The local story, put at 1,200 years old, is that a fishing couple found a white heron healing its wounds in a patch of steaming sea, where the spring had shifted about 60 meters offshore. The water is sodium-calcium chloride and very salty, and said to keep the skin moist. Wakura was built up into a resort of large hotels on the waterfront, and that is what the 1 January 2024 earthquake hit hardest. Seawalls and buildings along the bay were damaged and the whole town closed. Recovery has been slow and uneven. Soyu, the public bath in the middle of town, reopened on 26 March 2024, and it is the easiest way to bathe here without staying: 500 yen for adults, with indoor tubs at different temperatures, a sauna and a small outdoor bath. By 16 July 2026, when Noto Kaishu reopened its 98 rooms, 11 of the 19 inns in the Wakura ryokan cooperative were open again and the town had about 540 rooms, roughly 40% of what it had before the earthquake. Some of the reopened inns are working around demolition and construction next door. Kagaya, the inn that made Wakura famous, is not among them. It has given up on its old buildings and broke ground on 25 August 2026 for a new seven-storey, 33-room building designed by Kengo Kuma's office, with reopening targeted for the end of fiscal 2028, which means by March 2029. So come knowing what you will find: an onsen town that works, with a good public bath and a reduced choice of inns, beside cleared lots and cranes.