Noboribetsu Onsen
登別温泉
Hokkaido
Nine spring types rise from Jigokudani into one small resort town, making Noboribetsu a living catalogue of Japanese hot-spring water. Sulfur, acidic and iron baths can all be compared in a single night.
100
One hundred hot springs chosen by the editors to show the breadth of Japan's onsen culture. Our selection criteria are published. The 100 are not the limit of the database.
The 100 are an editorial selection, not the limit of the database. Chosen by the editors in October 2026; see each entry's check date for visiting information.
Advertising and partnerships: the 100 and the search order are decided by the editors independently of any advertising, sponsorship or booking links.
Region
登別温泉
Hokkaido
Nine spring types rise from Jigokudani into one small resort town, making Noboribetsu a living catalogue of Japanese hot-spring water. Sulfur, acidic and iron baths can all be compared in a single night.
川湯温泉
Hokkaido
Strongly acidic sulfur water flows untreated through the town's river and footbaths. Kawayu has its own JR station, so in winter you can arrive by train and sit in the station footbath watching the snow.
ニセコ温泉郷
Hokkaido
Springs of different chemistry, from the milky sulfur baths of Goshiki and Yumoto to the clear waters of Konbu and the station bath, are dotted around the Niseko range and can be toured in a day. A designated National Recuperation Hot Spring Area.
丸駒温泉
Hokkaido
An open-air bath fed from below by a spring rising at the edge of Lake Shikotsu, its depth rising and falling with the lake. A rare structure in which bath and lake are one body of water.
豊富温泉
Hokkaido
An amber, oil-bearing spring to which people with skin conditions travel from across Japan for long-stay bathing. The smell of oil and the culture of toji are both alive in this northernmost spa.
十勝川温泉
Hokkaido
Japan's best-known 'moor' spring, rich in organic matter from ancient plants. Its dark, silky water shows that a hot spring can come from peat and plains rather than from a volcano.
湯の川温泉
Hokkaido
A port-city hot spring you reach by Hakodate's streetcar. Close to the airport, it pairs with the harbour, the night view and the morning market as an easy first stop for solo travellers.
カルルス温泉
Hokkaido
A quiet toji (long-stay bathing) village designated Hokkaido's first National Recuperation Hot Spring Area in 1957. Named after Karlovy Vary in Bohemia, it is a meeting point between Japanese and European spa traditions.
Region
酸ヶ湯温泉
Aomori
The all-cypress 'Thousand-Person Bath' is a mixed bath you can enter in a rented bathing garment. Acidic milky water, self-catering toji rooms and Japan's deepest snow all in one place.
蔦温泉
Aomori
The spring rises untouched through gaps in the bath's floorboards — a true foot-sourced bath. A single inn surrounded by beech forest, where you can feel the water welling up around you.
浅虫温泉
Aomori
A little over 20 minutes by train from Aomori, the onsen town begins at the station and the sea is right there. For a solo traveller riding the rails, it is the easiest gateway to a seaside hot spring in Tohoku.
不老ふ死温泉
Aomori
An open-air bath at the edge of the Sea of Japan, its water turned rust-brown as dissolved iron meets the air. You can watch that chemistry and the sun sinking into the sea at the same time.
玉川温泉
Akita
With a pH of 1.2 and about 9,000 litres a minute from one vent, this is Japan's strongest acidic spring. Lying on the warm hokutolite bedrock and cooking for yourself in the self-catering wing is the Japanese tradition of toji, using a hot spring as a cure, in its purest surviving form.
鶴の湯温泉
Akita
The oldest inn in the Nyuto valley. Its thatched Honjin and milky mixed open-air bath preserve what an Edo-period cure spa actually looked like.
後生掛温泉
Akita
Seven kinds of bathing, from mud to box steam to the bubbling volcano bath, in a single cure spa. This is the toji culture of Hachimantai, where people once said you arrived on horseback and walked home in clogs.
須川高原温泉
Iwate
Halfway up Mt Kurikoma at 1,126 m, a strongly acidic spring yields 6,000 litres a minute and feeds the huge Dainichi-yu outdoor bath. Open only from late spring to autumn, it is the archetype of a high-mountain onsen.
大沢温泉
Iwate
The mixed outdoor bath Osawa-no-yu facing the Toyosawa River, and a self-catering toji wing with a pricing system built for one person to stay a long time. Here you can live the toji life rather than read about it.
鳴子温泉
Miyagi
Famous for the sheer variety of its waters: most of Japan's official spring types rise within one valley (the association counts seven in Naruko Onsenkyo). With kokeshi dolls lining the streets and the communal Takinoyu bath, it is also a town made for walking.
蔵王温泉
Yamagata
Three communal baths of strongly acidic sulfur water, a great open-air bath and the juhyo ice monsters. Here you can feel the sharp, skin-tightening grip of acid water and the winter mountain in the same day.
銀山温泉
Yamagata
Multi-storey wooden inns from the 1920s and 30s line the river; the whole street is a heritage townscape. Under snow and gaslight at night, it is as beautiful as a Japanese onsen town gets.
肘折温泉
Yamagata
A 1,200-year-old toji (therapeutic long-stay) village where the morning market still runs. Winters with up to four metres of snow and inns built for week-long stays show what hot springs meant when they were part of daily life, not a holiday.
高湯温泉
Fukushima
A milky sulfur spring where every facility has publicly declared pure free-flow bathing. The gap between source and tub temperature is closed not by stirring the water (yumomi) but by letting it cool naturally as it flows downhill, a textbook example of kakenagashi done properly.
飯坂温泉
Fukushima
A 25-minute private-railway ride from Fukushima Station, with nine public bathhouses scattered through town. The scalding water of Sabako-yu, and the way locals handle it, is a living lesson in Japan's communal-bath culture.
二岐温泉
Fukushima
A remote riverside inn whose rock bath is fed from below, the water bubbling up through the floor of the tub itself. It teaches two Japanese luxuries at once: deep-mountain quiet, and ashimoto-yushutsu, bathing directly on top of the source.
Region
草津温泉
Gunma
One of the largest natural flows in Japan, over 32,000 litres a minute. The culture of cooling pH 2 acid water by yumomi (beating it with boards) and bathing to the strict timetable of jikan-yu exists nowhere else. There are also free public baths.
四万温泉
Gunma
The very first National Health Resort (1954). With public drinking fountains, the Edo-period Sekizenkan inn and clear, gentle water, Shima teaches two sides of the onsen at once: therapy and architecture.
法師温泉
Gunma
Water rises through the floor of Hoshi-no-yu, a Meiji-era bathhouse in the Western-influenced Rokumeikan style. Set hours for mixed bathing and for women only make it a gentle introduction to the etiquette of konyoku.
伊香保温泉
Gunma
A 365-step stone staircase lined with inns, and 'golden water' turned rust-brown by its iron. Nowhere else shows the anatomy of a spa town so clearly: the source at the top, the water channelled downhill, the inns stepped along it.
万座温泉
Gunma
At 1,800 m, milky water with one of the highest sulfur contents in Japan. Open-air baths in thin mountain air, and in winter you sit in sulfur water surrounded by snow.
那須湯本温泉
Tochigi
The Shika-no-yu public bath is divided into six tubs from 41 to 48 °C, with a ritual of pouring water over the head before entering. Here you can experience bathing rules that have been handed down for 1,300 years.
塩原温泉郷
Tochigi
Eleven hot-spring villages stand along the Hokigawa gorge, each with its own water type and colour. Nowhere else explains so clearly, along one river, what a Japanese onsen-kyo (hot-spring district) actually is.
奥日光湯元温泉
Tochigi
A milky sulfur spring at 1,500 metres on the shore of Lake Yunoko. The spring huts and boardwalks of the source field let you see with your own eyes what a 'source' actually is. One of Japan's first three designated National Recreation Hot Springs (1954).
箱根湯本温泉
Kanagawa
Ninety minutes by train from Tokyo and the gateway to the 'twenty springs of Hakone'. Nowhere shows better how big a Japanese hot-spring region can be, or how tightly tourism and bathing have grown together.
湯河原温泉
Kanagawa
Praised in the Manyoshu and, from the Meiji era, a place where writers came to recover. It is close to the station, so you can walk between the town bath and the places where literature and hot water met.
蒲田温泉
Tokyo
The 'black water' of Ota ward, Tokyo. An amber-to-black spring from beneath the city, at the price of a public bathhouse. Proof that hot springs are not only found in the mountains.
養老渓谷温泉
Chiba
Black water rising in a Boso gorge. In Chiba, a prefecture of iodine-rich springs, it prompts the question of how seawater-born hot springs differ from volcanic ones.
Region
松之山温泉
Niigata
A 'fossil seawater' spring, twelve million years old and heated underground. Dense with salt and boric acid, in a heavy-snow village where the toji culture of long therapeutic stays survives.
月岡温泉
Niigata
A sulfur spring that looks emerald green. A clear example of mineral content showing up as colour, with a drinking fountain and footbath in a walkable town.
越後湯沢温泉
Niigata
A shinkansen station with sake tasting and a sake bath inside it, the closest railway and hot spring ever get. The snow country's water is within reach of a day trip.
宇奈月温泉
Toyama
The starting point of the Kurobe Gorge Railway. Clear water piped from Kuronagi, 7 km upstream, makes this the best place to understand how a source and its spa town can be far apart.
山中温泉
Ishikawa
The Kakusenkei gorge walk, the Kiku-no-yu public bath, Yamanaka lacquerware and Basho. Kaga's version of 'soyu culture', where a communal bath stands at the very centre of the spa town.
和倉温泉
Ishikawa
A very hot chloride spring facing Nanao Bay, where you can feel what a salt-rich seaside spring does to the skin. For post-earthquake recovery (Noto, January 2024), check each facility's status and its confirmation date.
あわら温泉
Fukui
A spa town set in farmland, with the free Ashiyu foot bath by the station. Because each inn draws on its own source, changing inns means changing water, a rare pleasure.
増富温泉
Yamanashi
A cool mineral spring (around 30 °C) famous for its radium content, bathed in long and lukewarm in the toji tradition of therapeutic stays. The place to understand with your body what a 'radioactive spring' is. A designated National Health Resort.
下部温泉
Yamanashi
Both the roughly 30 °C cool water said to be Shingen's hidden spring and a newer hot source. The place to learn the toji way of long, lukewarm soaking, and close to a Minobu Line station.
ほったらかし温泉
Yamanashi
A day-use open-air bath looking across the Kofu basin to Mt Fuji. Open from before dawn, it is the model of a modern pleasure: going to a hot spring for the view.
野沢温泉
Nagano
The leading example of communal-bath culture: 13 public baths maintained by villagers' 'yu-nakama' guilds. At the Ogama source, daily life still includes boiling vegetables in near-boiling spring water.
渋温泉
Nagano
Nine public baths along a stone-paved street, visited on the 'kuyu-meguri' circuit with a key borrowed from your inn. You learn in your body how the baths and the inns depend on each other.
地獄谷温泉
Nagano
The only place where wild Japanese macaques bathe in a hot spring. The human bath, the inn Korakukan, stands right beside it, so you see the bond between animals and hot water first hand. A 30-minute mountain walk.
白骨温泉
Nagano
The 'white bone' water, clouded white by precipitating calcium carbonate. A rare lesson that milky water does not always mean sulfur. A designated National Health Resort.
別所温泉
Nagano
Said to be the oldest hot spring in Shinshu, with three public bathhouses and a National Treasure octagonal pagoda. At the end of a small private railway, it shows how hot springs and temples grew up together as a place of faith.
鹿教湯温泉
Nagano
The heart of the Maruko hot-spring group, where a hospital that uses the spring and traditional cure inns exist side by side: a nationally designated health resort where you can see what toji looks like today.
Region
下呂温泉
Gifu
One of the 'three famous springs of Japan' alongside Arima and Kusatsu. Anyone can test the slippery feel of its alkaline simple spring in the foot baths that start right outside the station.
新穂高温泉
Gifu
A cluster of open-air baths looking up at the 3,000-metre peaks of the Northern Alps. At the innermost end of the Okuhida hot-spring group, it shows at a glance how mountains and hot springs belong together.
平湯温泉
Gifu
The oldest of the Okuhida hot springs and a transport hub whose bus terminal links Takayama, Matsumoto and Kamikochi: the base for exploring mountain hot springs by public transport.
熱海温泉
Shizuoka
Forty-five minutes from Tokyo by Shinkansen. Ever since Tokugawa Ieyasu had its water carried to Edo as 'okumiyu', Atami has been shaping the relationship between the city and the hot spring for 400 years.
修善寺温泉
Shizuoka
Tokko-no-yu rising in the middle of the Katsura River, and a bamboo-lined path. Izu's oldest hot spring, where Kamakura-era history and modern literature overlap on a walk through town.
伊東温泉
Shizuoka
A seaside resort with one of the largest flows on Honshu. In the three-storey wooden Tokaikan and the neighbourhood baths around town you can see what a pre-war hot-spring inn looked like.
寸又峡温泉
Shizuoka
A slippery sulfur spring known as 'the beauty-making bath', reached by bus into a gorge at the gateway to the Southern Alps, where the Dream Bridge hangs over a dam lake.
湯谷温泉
Aichi
A small hot-spring village along the Ure River's Horai Gorge, walkable from a station on the Iida Line and well suited to solo travellers. There is also a spring-water stand (currently suspended).
榊原温泉
Mie
Named 'Nanakuri' in the Pillow Book and used by Ise pilgrims for purifying baths. A place to see how an alkaline simple spring, the so-called 'beauty bath', is tied to the Grand Shrine of Ise.
Region
有馬温泉
Hyogo
Iron- and salt-rich 'gold' water and carbon-dioxide/radon 'silver' water. In one of Japan's three oldest spa towns you can compare two completely different springs a few minutes apart, and it is reachable by train from Kobe and Osaka.
城崎温泉
Hyogo
The archetype of soto-yu culture: seven public baths visited in yukata and geta. The willow-lined streets from the station and winter snow crab show that a spa town is also about food.
湯村温泉
Hyogo
Boil eggs in the 98°C Arayu, then sit in the foot bath. The gap between source temperature and bath temperature becomes obvious in the steam along the river.
白浜温泉
Wakayama
One of Japan's three oldest springs. The shoreline bath Saki-no-yu has been used since the Manyoshu era, and Pacific spray lands in the tubs.
湯の峰温泉
Wakayama
The Tsuboyu, the only hot spring bath inscribed as World Heritage that you can actually enter. The purification bath of the Kumano pilgrimage, said to change colour seven times a day.
川湯温泉
Wakayama
Hot water rises when you dig the riverbed, and in winter the river is dammed into the giant Sennin-buro. The most elemental way to experience that hot springs come out of the ground.
龍神温泉
Wakayama
One of Japan's three 'beauty baths'. You can feel the silky bicarbonate water at each inn along the Hidaka River gorge, and you can reach this mountain spa by bus from Koyasan.
十津川温泉
Nara
The hub of a hot-spring district where the whole village declared itself 100% free-flowing in 2004. You arrive on Japan's longest scheduled bus route, and you come to understand why kakenagashi (water flowing straight from the source) matters.
湯の花温泉
Kyoto
Kyoto's 'inner parlour' spa in Kameoka, about half an hour by train from the city. Its simple, radon-bearing water is close enough to pair with a geiko and Japanese dance evening in Kyoto on a one-night trip.
嵐山温泉
Kyoto
A hot spring inside Kyoto city, right by the Togetsukyo bridge. The water is a modest simple spring and the flow is small, but nowhere else lets you combine Kyoto's cultural sights and an onsen soak on the same day so easily.
木津温泉
Kyoto
Said to be the oldest spring in Tango. A small spa within walking distance of a Kyoto Tango Railway station, well suited to solo travel, and a lesson in how far 'the same prefecture' can be: roughly two and a half hours from Kyoto city.
おごと温泉
Shiga
Baths with a view of Lake Biwa. About 20 minutes by train from Kyoto Station, at the foot of Mt Hiei and its Enryaku-ji temple: a near-city hot spring that makes an easy first solo onsen trip.
Region
三朝温泉
Tottori
A radioactive spring said to have one of the highest radon contents in the world. Drinking fountains, inhalation (radon hot-air baths), public baths and a riverside open-air pool are all here, and medical research has gone on for a century. If you want to understand radon springs, start here.
岩井温泉
Tottori
A spring of some 1,200 years where a unique ritual survives: 'yukamuri', pouring hot water over a towel-covered head with a ladle. You can try it yourself at the public bath Yukamuri Onsen.
玉造温泉
Shimane
One of Japan's oldest recorded springs, called 'the hot water of the gods' in the Izumo Fudoki and famed as a beautifying bath. It ties the moisturising feel of sulfate–chloride water to the mythic landscape of Izumo.
温泉津温泉
Shimane
The hot-spring port of the Iwami silver mine, inside a World Heritage zone. The mineral flakes and brown crust in the two public baths, Motoyu and Yakushi-yu, show what spring water looks like when nothing is done to it.
湯原温泉
Okayama
Sunayu: a free mixed open-air bath fed from the bed of the Asahi river directly below a dam, open around the clock. The place to see how mixed bathing works in Japan today, including the introduction of bathing garments.
奥津温泉
Okayama
A spa that keeps the tradition of 'foot-treading laundry' in the river's hot water, the floor-fed 'Kagi-yu' bath where water rises beneath the bathers, and the quiet of a National Recuperation Spa.
俵山温泉
Yamaguchi
The archetype of a toji spa: inns almost without baths of their own, whose guests walk to the public Machi-no-yu and Hakuen-no-yu. Many small inns take solo guests for long stays. A National Recuperation Spa.
長門湯本温泉
Yamaguchi
Yamaguchi's oldest spring, whose town was redesigned in 2020 around the rebuilt Onto bathhouse. A walkable riverside resort on the Otozure that shows what a Japanese onsen town can look like today.
Region
道後温泉
Ehime
Said to be Japan's oldest spring. The Honkan, a public bathhouse that is also a national cultural treasure, combines architecture, literature and a tram ride from the city centre in one place.
祖谷温泉
Tokushima
An open-air bath reached by a 170-metre cable-car descent into the Iya Gorge. The 38 °C source flows through untouched, and fine bubbles cling to your skin in the tepid water.
塩江温泉
Kagawa
Takamatsu's mountain retreat: a nationally designated health resort reachable by city bus, and an easy solo stop to pair with Sanuki udon noodles.
鈍川温泉
Ehime
One of the three historic baths of Iyo: smooth alkaline water with radon, in the hills behind Imabari. The onsen to visit in Ehime after Dogo.
Region
鉄輪温泉
Oita
The heart of Beppu's eight hot-spring districts. Jigoku-mushi steam cooking, the mushi-yu steam bath and self-catering kashima inns for long cures add up to a culture that puts geothermal heat to use in daily life.
明礬温泉
Oita
Thatched 'yunohana huts' have produced hot-spring mineral crystals here since the Edo period. The only place to see milky-blue sulfur water and how bath salts are grown, side by side.
由布院温泉
Oita
Japan's second-largest hot-spring flow. Morning mist on Lake Kinrin, and a town that reinvented what a resort could be through art museums and food. Reachable by train.
長湯温泉
Oita
One of Japan's great carbonated springs. In the 32 °C pool at Lamune Onsen bubbles coat your whole body, and drinking fountains are everywhere. The first place to learn with your own skin what a carbon-dioxide spring is.
黒川温泉
Kumamoto
A bathing pass that lets you hop between three inns' open-air baths, and a landscape unified by native woodland planting. A model of how a whole resort can create value together.
杖立温泉
Kumamoto
Steam from mushi-yu (natural steam baths) rises along a riverside spa town. Narrow back alleys called Sedoya, and in spring, carp streamers that fill the whole valley.
わいた温泉郷
Kumamoto
A small spa district, Hagenoyu, Takenoyu and more, where geothermal steam rises everywhere. Private family baths are the norm, so even a solo traveller can have a bath to themselves: a very Kyushu way of bathing.
嬉野温泉
Saga
A silky bicarbonate spring counted among Japan's three great skin-beautifying baths. Onsen yudofu, tofu simmered in the spring water, is the classic example of hot spring and food becoming one.
武雄温泉
Saga
Public bathhouses behind a vermilion gate that is an Important Cultural Property: 1,300 years of history and a public-bath culture within walking distance of a shinkansen station.
雲仙温泉
Nagasaki
A spa town set inside the steaming Unzen Hells. It lies in one of Japan's first national parks, and its history as a summer retreat for foreign residents from the Meiji era makes it a meeting point between Japanese and international hot spring culture.
霧島温泉郷
Kagoshima
A cluster of milky sulfur springs scattered across the slopes of the Kirishima volcanoes. Sakamoto Ryoma came here on what is called Japan's first honeymoon, and the volcanic ground gives an unusual variety of waters.
指宿温泉
Kagoshima
Sunamushi: being buried in beach sand heated by the hot springs. It uses geothermal heat outside the bathtub, a way of 'bathing' that is rare anywhere in the world.
妙見温泉
Kagoshima
Naturally flowing springs line the Amori River, and every facility runs its water straight from the source. It is a toji village (long-stay therapeutic bathing) where you can feel how fresh the carbonated water is on your skin, with self-catering wings where you can stay on your own.
鰻温泉
Kagoshima
A hamlet on the shore of Lake Unagi where homes have steam ovens called sume. Here you can see daily meals cooked with nothing but hot spring vapour.
中乃湯
Okinawa
Tours built from the data by condition. Check the dates on each onsen's page.
Noboribetsu OnsenTamagawa Hot SpringIkaho OnsenMasutomi Onsen
70Noboribetsu OnsenSukayu OnsenSukawa OnsenGoshougake Onsen
45Kawayu OnsenToyotomi OnsenNoboribetsu OnsenMarukoma Onsen
15Toyotomi OnsenFurofushi OnsenŌsawa OnsenSukawa Onsen
1201Kawayu OnsenTokachigawa OnsenToyotomi OnsenNoboribetsu Onsen
92Kawayu OnsenTokachigawa OnsenToyotomi OnsenNoboribetsu Onsen