Spring type (therapeutic classes)
Under 1 g/kg of dissolved minerals and 25 °C or warmer. Gentle on the skin; pH 8.5 or higher is called "alkaline simple".
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Soica2001 (talk) · Public domain
カルルス温泉
Hokkaido · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 8
Named after a Bohemian spa, Karurusu was Hokkaido's first National Recuperation Hot Spring Area: a quiet, clear-water place for long stays.
掬茶 · CC BY-SA 4.0
大沢温泉
Iwate · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 17
A mixed open-air bath hanging over the Toyosawa River, and a self-catering wing where a night costs a little over 4,000 yen. The old toji way of life is still intact here.
Zhaitengli · CC BY 4.0
鳴子温泉
Miyagi · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 18
Seven of Japan's ten official spring types in one valley. The communal Takinoyu by the station costs 300 yen, and the town lends you wooden geta to clatter from bath to bath.
Higa4 · CC0
飯坂温泉
Fukushima · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 23
Twenty-five minutes by local train from Fukushima Station, a town with nine public bathhouses where you sit in very hot water next to the people who live there.
Quercus acuta · CC BY-SA 4.0
箱根温泉
Kanagawa · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 33
About 85 minutes by train from Shinjuku, and you step off into the gateway of a mountain with seventeen hot-spring villages.
NY066 · CC BY-SA 3.0
湯河原温泉
Kanagawa · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 34
A spring sung about in the eighth-century Manyoshu still rises in the Fujiki valley, sixty minutes by train from Yokohama.
Syced · CC0
越後湯沢温泉
Niigata · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 39
A bullet-train station where, without leaving the building, you can taste sake from every brewery in Niigata and then bathe in hot-spring water laced with it.
掬茶 · CC BY-SA 4.0
宇奈月温泉
Toyama · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 40
The source is seven kilometres up the gorge. Water that leaves it above 90°C arrives in town through a pipe at a convenient 63°C.
663highland · CC BY-SA 4.0
山中温泉
Ishikawa · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 41
In the gorge town where Basho praised a scent of hot water that needed no chrysanthemums, the Kiku-no-yu public bath still sits at the town's navel.
浅野ます道 · CC BY 3.0
下部温泉
Yamanashi · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 45
Water at 30 °C rises from the rock beneath your feet in 'Shingen's hidden spring'. An hour in the cool bath, then a warm-up in the new hot source: a toji village with two kinds of water.
Σ64 · CC BY 3.0
ほったらかし温泉
Yamanashi · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 46
It opens an hour before sunrise. From the open-air bath you watch the lights of the Kofu basin go out and Mt Fuji turn white.
岡田奈良 · CC BY-SA 3.0
鹿教湯温泉
Nagano · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 52
A 475-bed rehabilitation hospital stands in the middle of the village, and the inns advertise solo travellers welcome all year and self-catering wings. Here toji, the long therapeutic stay, is still a living practice.
Lsattayamas · CC BY-SA 4.0
渋温泉
Nagano · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 48
Borrow a key from your inn, take a towel, walk the stone-paved street and stamp it at nine public baths in turn. In Shibu Onsen, staying the night is the ticket to the baths.
Asturio Cantabrio · CC BY-SA 4.0
下呂温泉
Gifu · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 53
Alkaline water above pH 9 is piped at 55 °C to inns across town, and nine free foot baths within walking distance of the station let you feel the 'slippery' water without even undressing.
Soica2001 (talk) · Public domain
新穂高温泉
Gifu · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 54
Look up at 3,000-metre peaks from a riverside open-air bath, then ride a double-deck gondola from the same spot to 2,156 metres.
Alpsdake · CC BY-SA 4.0
平湯温泉
Gifu · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 55
Some forty sources pour out 8,600 litres a minute, and right by the bus terminal are a donation-only bath and a complex of sixteen open-air pools.
PekePON · CC BY-SA 4.0
伊東温泉
Shizuoka · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 58
A town that shares more than 26,000 litres a minute, the biggest flow in Shizuoka, between a three-storey wooden inn of 1928 and public baths named for the Seven Lucky Gods.
Richie Johns · CC BY 2.0
修善寺温泉
Shizuoka · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 57
Look at a spring rising in the middle of the river, bathe in a public bath named for the one where a shogun was murdered, and walk through bamboo to the temple. Izu's oldest hot spring is a history book you read on foot.
Bariston · CC BY-SA 4.0
湯谷温泉
Aichi · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 60
Step off at an unstaffed station on the Iida Line and ten or so inns face each other across a river whose bed is one flat sheet of rock, like laid boards. The salty spring a hermit is said to have found 1,300 years ago still rises beside it.
国土地理院 · CC BY 4.0
榊原温泉
Mie · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 61
The spring Sei Shonagon praised a thousand years ago as 'Nanakuri' still rises at a cool 31°C, and you can bathe in it as it comes.
あばさー · Public domain
雄琴温泉
Shiga · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 73
A few stops from Kyoto on the Kosei line, pH 9.0 alkaline water overlooking Lake Biwa, in a spa whose inns spent twenty years rewriting its red-light reputation.
経済特区 · CC0
嵐山温泉
Kyoto · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 71
A few minutes' walk from the Togetsukyo bridge, faintly milky water drawn from 1,200 m underground waits at the end of a Kyoto sightseeing day.
VinayaMoto · CC BY-SA 4.0
木津温泉
Kyoto · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 72
Kyoto Prefecture's oldest spring, by tradition, lies on the Sea of Japan side of the Tango peninsula, a long rail ride from Kyoto city, and it even bubbles up on the station platform.
三塚 · CC BY-SA 4.0
三朝温泉
Tottori · 100 Onsen to Know Japan — No. 74
Soak it, drink it, breathe it. A spa built around taking radon into the body three ways, with a free riverside bath and free drinking fountains open to the whole town.
