🐉 Japan now has a real, free Pokémon hot spring: a footbath in earthquake-hit Noto where Pikachu, Gyarados and friends keep you company while you soak. There's just one catch. Less than two months after it opened, nearly half of the Pokémon have ended up injured.

A footbath meant to bring Noto back

The Wakura Pokémon Footbath opened on May 12 inside Yuttari Park, a small bayside spot in the Wakura Onsen hot spring area of Nanao, Ishikawa Prefecture. The city renovated an existing footbath and turned it into something genuinely odd and lovely: seven Pokémon statues ringing a basin of real hot spring water, with the bay stretching out beyond. Because it's an ashiyu (a foot bath rather than a full soak), you don't undress. You just slip off your shoes and socks, sit on the edge, and let the warm water do its thing.

It's also completely free, open daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Among the seven statues are Pikachu, the water-dragon Gyarados, Vaporeon, and the perpetually confused-looking duck Psyduck.

The whimsy has a serious purpose underneath. The footbath was built by Nanao City together with the Pokémon with You Foundation, a Tokyo-based group that has been backing communities hit by the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake. Wakura Onsen was hammered by that quake; at one point every inn in the area was shut. Recovery has been slow; only nine of the district's 19 ryokan have reopened so far, so a free attraction that pulls visitors back into town is exactly the kind of bright spot locals have been waiting for.

Visitors enjoying the Wakura Pokémon Footbath on its opening day, surrounded by Pokémon statues

Source: Nanao City press release (PR TIMES)

Three Pokémon down in three weeks

The trouble started almost immediately. On the evening of May 21, nine days after opening, a man soaking in the bath leaned back against the Vaporeon statue and cracked its fin-shaped tail. To his credit, he called the city the next morning, owned up to it, and offered to pay for repairs. Vaporeon was pulled out for fixing.

Then on the morning of May 30, a visitor spotted that Psyduck was missing part of its left foot. The broken-off piece had been left next to the statue. The city says it couldn't determine how it happened, and because the damage may have been deliberate, it filed a report with the Nanao police. Psyduck was removed too.

The most recent casualty came on June 19, when a horn on Gyarados snapped. The person responsible came forward and said it broke when they touched it. Gyarados got off lighter, in a sense: its statue doubles as the spout that feeds hot water into the bath, which makes it awkward to haul away, so staff patched it up on the spot the same day and left it in place.

Accident, or something else?

This is where the story gets uncomfortable. Two of the three cases look like honest accidents. Both the Vaporeon and Gyarados culprits stepped forward on their own. Psyduck is the odd one out. A snapped-off foot found neatly placed beside the statue is hard to explain as someone simply brushing past, which is why the police got involved. One theory floating around locally is gentler: Psyduck's webbed foot ends in a sharp point, and someone may have removed it out of worry that a small child would bump into it and get hurt. Nobody knows for sure.

There's also an awkward design question here. The footbath doesn't actually ban touching the statues. Signs ask visitors not to lean on or climb them, but in a free, open-air spot full of excited kids and fans wanting selfies with their favorite Pokémon, "please don't touch" only goes so far. The operators have now put up extra warning signs and are reviewing how sturdy the statues really are. A city representative was blunt about where this could lead: if the damage keeps happening, they may have to forbid touching the Pokémon altogether.

"Please be gentle with them"

For all the talk of police reports, the mood on the ground is mostly sadness rather than anger. Fans who made the trip have been turning up to find empty spaces where their favorites used to be. One visitor said the footbath looked nothing like the photos, and that she'd come back once Vaporeon was reinstalled. A Nanao tourism official admitted the statues weren't built to break this easily and that the reports caught the team off guard, but kept circling back to the same plea: this is meant to be a symbol of Wakura's recovery, so please handle the Pokémon with care. The local tourism association struck a similar note: grateful for the crowds, sorry about the damage, and hoping people keep coming.

The two removed statues are due back after repairs. And the underlying tension isn't unique to Noto: the more you let people get close to something, the more it gets worn, knocked and broken, and the harder it is to keep an attraction both hands-on and intact. Where you live, do free public mascots, murals and statues tend to survive the love they get? Or do the "please don't touch" signs always lose in the end?

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