An outdoor bath, steam rising, snow piled up all around it. If that is what you came to Japan for, it helps to know where the snow actually falls deepest. These are the 79 onsen towns the government designates as National Health Resort Hot Springs, ordered by how much snow their winters bring — with the nearest ski area and how far away it is.
Calculated: 2026-09-29 · 77 of the 79 onsen are ranked.
On the map
The bigger and darker the circle, the more snow that onsen town gets in winter. Orange dots are analysed hot spring sources of 42 °C or more. Tap a circle to see which town it is, then open its page from there.
Tap a circle to see its name · tap the map to zoom in there · drag to move · + and − to zoom
Onsen town (bigger and darker = more snow)Hot spring source, 42 °C or moreNot ranked (location is the town hall, not the onsen)
Hot spring sources: processed from the hot spring analysis data in the Geothermal Information Database (GRES-DB), Geological Survey of Japan, AIST. Map: Natural Earth (public domain).
The ten snowiest onsen towns
Where winter brings the most snow: the places to go for a hot bath with snow piled all around.
Distances are straight-line, not by road. 58 of the 77 ranked onsen have a ski area within 30 km. There is nothing special about 30 km — we picked it as roughly "you could go and come back".
Contains advertising. "Stay" links search Rakuten Travel, and we may earn a commission on bookings made through them. The ranking and the snowfall figures are calculated independently of that.
Onsen we did not rank
Their coordinates land on the centre of the municipality rather than on the onsen itself. A mountain onsen gets far more snow than the town hall does, so ranking it on that figure would place it unfairly low. The numbers are shown; the ranks are not.
The list is the Ministry of the Environment's register of National Health Resort Hot Springs — 79 towns designated under the Hot Springs Act. We did not choose which ones appear.
Snowfall is the total that fell from December to March, averaged over the last twelve winters. It is measured the same way as our 3,069 ski areas, which is what lets both sit in the same table.
Coordinates come from OpenStreetMap, and every one is checked to confirm it really falls in the prefecture the town belongs to. The fifteen that could not be matched automatically were resolved by hand.
These are estimates, not records of what fell. Checked against Japan Meteorological Agency observations they come to about six tenths of the real total, and mountain towns read lowest. Treat them as a guide to roughly where somewhere sits.
The weight of the snow is not in them. The same amount of water counts the same whether it fell cold and light or wet and heavy, so cold places read low.
Twelve winters, averaged. Big years and small years still differ enough that neighbouring ranks swap around; each town’s own page shows its leanest and deepest winter.
None of this tells you whether you can bathe outdoors in the snow. It measures what falls from the sky — not whether there is a rotenburo, whether the inn opens in winter, or whether the road is clear. Check with the town before you travel.