To be honest, I don't have that much experience of onsens in this part of the country. It's a long way from my home in Kobe, and I've always been dragged in the other direction by the lure of Kyushu. However, this doesn't mean that there's nothing to see up here. The Tohoku and Hokkaido areas in particular are extremely beautiful, and well worth a visit regardless of the presence of hot springs. Anyway, here goes....
Sounkyo is a very beautiful place. It is also bone-crackingly cold in the winter. Not only is it located in Hokkaido, but it is also more than 1000m above sea level in the Daisetsuzan National Park. You may have read in my intro about an open-air bath I took while all around was 20 degrees below zero. This was the place. The scenery around here is stunning; all mountains and forests, and in winter, about 300 metres of snow. It gets so cold that the claim to fame of the area is that the numerous (large) waterfalls all freeze solid during the winter. Quite a sight, I can assure you. We stayed at a hotel whose name unfortunately escapes me, but we had an excellent dinner, plenty of good beer, and an excellent rotenburo surrounded by more snow than I've seen for a long time. The best way to reach Sounkyo is under your steam. It is fairly remote. You might want to consider buying some snow chains for the winter (and spring and autumn, possibly). There is a bus service from Asahikawa, but I don't think it runs all that often. In the summer, this area is extremely popular with hikers, so you could conceivably camp. Well worth a visit at any time of year, though. The scenery alone justifies it.
Meakan is in the eastern part of Hokkaido, about a thousand miles from any big town. We got there via a 5 hour bus journey (hangover included) from Sapporo. This was also in winter, and it is a tad chilly. Nearby Lake Akan freezes over for a good part of this time of year. We stayed at the "Akan View Hotel", which I wouldn't particularly recommend. It's not that bad. It's just not that good, either. A bit old. Seen better days. No open air bath, either. Unforgivable. What the bath is, however, is extremely capacious. You could get half the residents of Hokkaido into it. For once, though, the onsen plays second fiddle to another attraction. About 5 minutes walk from the hotel, there is an Ainu village. The Ainu are the indigenous people of Hokkaido, now almost gone thanks to encroachment by mainland Japanese. Culturally, quite different from the rest of the country, this town has plenty of interest for the casual, ignorant visitor such as myself. It is a bit tacky and touristy, but where isn't in Japan. We joined in an Ainu folk dance (tricky on an icy hill), and performed an ancient Ainu martial art (a snowball fight). Good innocent fun! To sum up, then, don't come here just for the springs. There are better ones in the area. But if you want to learn something historical and/or cultural (shock horror), then you should have a good time. Gloves recommended in winter, especially those planning to try their hand at snowballing.
Yunokawa onsen is located in the city of Hakodate, the southern extremity of Hokkaido. Famed for its night view and trappist monastery, the hot spring tends to get overlooked. This is probably because it's rather dull. This is suburbia, and the streets are lined with a series of faceless, concrete hotels. One of them, the Yunohama hotel is where we stayed. I remember almost nothing of it, which presumably means it was neither outstandingly good nor particularly bad. One thing I do recall is having to trudge through knee-high snow to get to an off-licence, as the beer in the hotel was rather exorbitant. As for the bath itself, there was apretty neat steam sauna, but apart from that, nothing to write home about, really. You're better off spending your time climbing the mountain or getting smashed in one of Hokkaido's numerous beer halls. I hope I haven't put you off.
Lake Shikotsu is regarded as rather a mysterious place by the Japanese. A disproportionately high number of murders are committed in the vicinity, probably due to the fact that there is generally no-one around. To reach Lake Shikotsu, take the JR rapid service to Chitose station and then wait for the bus. And wait. And wait. And wait. They don't go very often, which is one good reason to make sure you're waiting on the right side of the road. We waited on the other side of the road and were a little disappointed to find that the bus which pulled up right on time was, in fact, going to the airport. We could have had a bath at the airport, but I doubt it would have been all that exciting. So, faced with a 3 hour wait for the next bus, or shelling out 6000 yen for a taxi, we decided to recruit one more couple, who were also waiting on the wrong side of the road. Well, we told them to. Our taxi driver (who had gone 50,000km without an accident, apparently) slewed and slid his cab along the icy winter roads and dropped us by the lakeside. We stood in the freezing cold, realising that our arrival had boosted the number of tourists in the place to 4. Amazingly, the "Lake Shikotsu Hotel" was open, so we surprised the receptionist by going in and asking him for a bath. The hotel has an open-air bath, but it is a bit of a trek from the warmth of indoors, so you need to soak yourself well in the indoor bath before making a bolt along the slippery path. Once immersed, though, the hardships are worth it. Nice, big bath. Trees and shrubs all around, not to mention a good helping of fresh, white snow. This was New Year's Eve. The water is a good temperature, and although you can't see the lake from the bath, you can hear it.
After your bath, a quick stroll round part of the lake shore is recommended. Surrounded by misty mountains on all sides, and with barely a soul about, it is very photogenic. Go in January, and they have some sort of snow festival, with large ice sculptures and so on.
Don't miss the bus back, though, or you'll probably have to stay the night.
My memories of Tsukioka are vague to say the least. It was a long time ago, it was raining like hell, and I'd had a bit to drink the night before, but here goes.
Tsukioka is a small town in the middle of a very flat part of Niigata Prefecture near the Japan Sea coast, surrounded by mile upon mile of rice paddies. To get there, you have to catch a one coach diesel train which runs between the "cities" of Niitsu and Shibata. From the station, it's a short bus ride into town. I can't remember the name of the public bath that we used, but it was near a big hotel. Why didn't we use the hotel bath? I can't remember that either. Anyway, the water was really hot, and quite green (and very small), but on the day, there was actually more water lying around in the street than there was in the bath. My main memory of this backwater is a really good "gyudon" (beef and onions with rice) that I had for lunch in a deserted restaurant above an equally vacant souvenir shop. I can't exactly recommend this place, but it filled in a wet morning all right.
Never has so ordinary an onsen been so worshipped by three such sweaty men. We heaved our aching, reeking bodies into this FREE hot spring after descending from the top of Yarigatake, a man eating mountain. We climbed down over 2000m in about 7 hours, and were on the brink of using a cellular phone to call for a helicopter taxi (well, not quite). My clothes were so disgusting, I threw them all away. There was no soap or shampoo here, so I borrowed a pube-infested bar of soap from a fellow climber and washed my hair with it. Are you reading this, Vidal Sassoon? There are a few hotels with (presumably) much nicer baths, but this was absolutely free, and placed romantically between the public bogs and the bus stop. Whoever you are that built this place, I want your babies.
Hirayu is just down the road from Shin Hotaka, and barely an hour after crawling out of there, we checked in at "Hirayunomori", a hotel that had changed hands so recently, all the towels and sheets still bore the name of the former owners. We thought we'd come to the wrong place. We were drawn here by the promise of "8 open air baths", which indeed there were, but one little detail that they neglected to mention was that all but one are about the temperature of a 3 hour old cup of tea. Hmmmm. If you pay through the nose, you shouldn't have to keep wiping it on your goose-pimpled arms. However, as onsen towns go, this is a goodun. i.e. not all the buildings are faceless concrete monstrosities. Only about 95%. We found a great ramen shop, then stocked up with beer, and went back to our room to play chilish drinking games. Ah, holidays.
Please feel free to mail me with any comments/corrections/articles for inclusion that you may have. I'm aiming to make this page as comprehensive as possible, so please contribute if you can. Thanks.
Get your own Free Home Page