Gyokusenkan Atochi Garden, Japanese garden in Iwamizawa, Hokkaido, Japan.
Gyokusenkan Atochi Garden is a Japanese garden in Iwamizawa featuring traditional landscape design with arched bridges, cherry trees, waterfalls, and maintained walking paths. Visitors move through different areas of the grounds, each offering new views and spaces to explore.
The garden descends from Yamahato no Yutei, a ryotei inn opened in 1903. The following year its owners drilled a mineral spring on the grounds and converted it into a hot-spring inn, renaming it Gyokusenkan because the spring water bubbled up with methane gas like beads. It operated until 1979, then stood derelict for over twenty years before the city restored it as a park in 2001.
The teahouse, Gyokusen-an, stands on the island in the Shinji-ike pond; it has a hiragana-style single-character roof and walls in the Juraku style. It can be reserved for actual tea gatherings, and basic utensils are lent out. The pond itself is shaped like the cursive character for "heart" and is linked to the island by a taiko bridge and a yatsuhashi bridge.
The nearest station is Iwamizawa, about 2 km away. Take the Chuo Bus Kaede Danchi line via Higashi High School and get off at Fukushi Center-mae, or the Midorigaoka-Tetsuhoku loop or Horomukai line to Kyogijo-mae, then walk a few minutes. Cherry blossoms peak in early to mid-May.
The garden's name comes from the hot spring that bubbled up here: when the inn dug its mineral spring, the water rising with methane gas looked like beads, so it was called Gyokusenkan, "jewel spring hall". The old spring well is still marked in a corner of the grounds.
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