Iizaka Onsen carries more than 1,200 years of history and is one of the leading hot spring towns of Tohoku. Inns, public bathhouses, historic buildings, footbaths and souvenir shops all sit within walking distance, so before or after a meeting participants can walk out and take in the whole town themselves. Fukushima City is about ninety minutes from Tokyo by Shinkansen and was designated an International Convention City in 2025, with venues, accommodation and the hot spring quarter compressed into a very compact scale.
The Former Horikiri Residence is the reception house of the district: the old home of the Horikiri family, wealthy farmers and merchants since the Edo period, now open as a tourism and cultural exchange facility. The Jukken-gura storehouse in its grounds was built in 1775 and is the largest and oldest surviving storehouse in Fukushima Prefecture; the main house is modern Japanese architecture with a garden beside it. In June 2026 the Fifth Conference on Advances in Radioactive Isotope Science held its welcome reception here.
It answers how the welcome reception of an academic conference avoids the ordinary: not a hotel banquet room but a house of two hundred and fifty years and its garden, with the hot spring street outside the door and a ryokan reception available later the same evening. Admission is free and it stays open until nine at night — this is not a place you can only enter by spending.