Fukushima Coast · IwakiNo.578★★Open in map →
Spa Resort Hawaiians
— The hot-spring theme park a coal town built
An indoor pool and hot-spring complex in the hills behind Iwaki, built by a coal company as a replacement industry for its own town. The Polynesian dance shows are performed by a troupe trained locally, and that history is the reason to come.
- FromIwaki Station
- ~30 minJR Joban Line, then a free shuttle
- Get off atYumoto Station (JR Joban Line)
- From there
- Spa Resort Hawaiians
The sweet spot
Nobody local calls this a hidden spot — it is one of the best-known leisure destinations in Tohoku. What visitors from abroad miss is why it exists at all. Read it as a mining town's own answer to closure and the palm trees stop looking like kitsch.
Where it is
20 more notes in Fukushima · open the map →What to look for — in walking order
- Water Parkthe domed main hall, a heated pool floor kept at summer temperature all year
- The show stagethe stage inside the main hall where the resort's own dance troupe performs
- Spring Parkthe open-air section added when the resort was renamed, pools under the sky
- Spa Garden Pareoa bath garden built around the onsen water rather than around swimming
- Edo Jowa Yoichian outdoor bath on an unusual scale, dressed as an Edo-period bathing scene
How to actually get there
- Iwaki Station → Yumoto Station (JR Joban Line).
- Yumoto Station → Spa Resort Hawaiians (free shuttle bus, about 15 min).
- Start in the Water Park hall, then work outward to the spring park and the garden baths.
- Build the day around the show times posted at the entrance, then take the shuttle back to Yumoto.
- JR Joban Line to Yumoto, then the resort shuttle
- Iwaki Station →(JR Joban Line, a few stops south)→ Yumoto Station, then about fifteen minutes on the free shuttle bus from outside the station. The shuttle keeps a fixed timetable with only a handful of departures a day, so check it before you travel. A taxi covers the same ground if the times do not line up.
- Return from Yumoto Station
- Take the shuttle or a taxi back to Yumoto Station and the Joban Line, north to Iwaki or south toward Mito and Tokyo. The last useful connection is earlier than you would expect at a resort, so check it when you arrive rather than when you leave. Platform 1 has a footbath if you end up waiting.
About the place
The resort stands inland from the Pacific at Joban Fujiwara, in the hills above the Iwaki Yumoto hot-spring town. Under one roof are heated pools, water slides, onsen baths and a show stage, all warmed by water from the same field that once flooded the coal workings below. Around that core sit hotels, an open-air spring park and a garden bath complex, so the place functions as a day trip or as somewhere to sleep. It is not a nature destination and never pretends to be. It is a piece of industrial history that still trades as a business.
How to enjoy it
Shows run several times through the day with a larger evening programme, so build the swimming around the stage times posted at the entrance rather than the other way round. Swimsuits are needed in the pool halls and not in the onsen baths, and both are rented on site. Winter is the counter-intuitive season to come: the halls are held at summer temperature while the hills outside are under snow.
Background & history
Joban's coal seams ran wet. The pits pumped hot spring water out constantly, and coal was losing ground to oil. The mining company set up a music and dance school for the daughters of its miners, and on 15 January 1966 it opened the Joban Hawaiian Center, heating a tropical resort with the very water the mines had fought. The dancers became nationally known as the Hula Girls. The complex took its present name in 1990, when a large open-air spring park opened alongside it.
Before you go
- Cash
- Day admission is priced by date rather than at one flat rate, and the official site publishes a calendar instead of a single figure — look up the day you plan to go. Swimsuits and towels can be rented on site if you travel light.
- Before you go
- This is an indoor resort, so rain does not close it, but the season changes what is open: the open-air spring park and parts of the garden baths run a shorter season than the covered halls. Maintenance shutdowns are announced on the official site. Winter is cold outside and warm inside, which is rather the point, though snow can affect the roads and the shuttle.
- Another way
- The resort runs its own free long-distance coaches from Tokyo for guests staying overnight, which removes the train legs altogether. From Yumoto, a taxi is the fallback whenever the local shuttle timetable does not match your train.
- After you get off
- The shuttle picks up outside Yumoto Station and sets down at the resort entrance, a run of about fifteen minutes up into the hills. Yumoto is a hot-spring town in its own right, so the wait at the station is not wasted time — there is a footbath on the platform.