Dake Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
岳温泉 · Fukushima
Dake Onsen (岳温泉) is a nationally designated onsen town in Fukushima. We measured how much snow its winters bring, using the same method as for the 3,069 ski areas on this site.
How this place came to be
The Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku records that on the 20th day of the 10th month of 863, court rank was conferred on a hot spring called Komusubi; the Nihon Kiryaku records the same for Koyoubi in 897. Both are taken to mean this spring. Its name had reached the capital in the Heian period. It was designated a National Health Resort Hot Spring in 1955.
The source lies at 1,500 m, directly below Mt. Kurogane in the Adatara range. A single pipe carries the water eight kilometres down. It is an acidic spring, pH 2.48, but the long journey works it soft, and it arrives gentle on the skin. Ten inns and two day-use baths share that one pipe. In a late-Edo ranking sheet of hot springs, Dake stood highest in the Tohoku region.
The town itself sits at about 600 m inside Bandai-Asahi National Park. Snow lies late and the cherries open in the last week of April; "Sakurazaka," the lane running from the centre to Kagami-ga-ike, is the last place in Nihonmatsu to bloom, and its old trees close over the road. In winter most visitors come for the ski areas nearby.
The tourism association, founded in 1965, has laid out 33 walking routes of varying length and climb under the slogan "health by walking Dake." A scheme that composted the inns' food waste to grow vegetables for their kitchens also ran here — it has been stopped since the nuclear accident that followed the 2011 earthquake.
Sources: 環境省 岳温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 104 cm |
| Rank | 41 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 2 of 2 in Fukushima |
| Against the median of 77 | -14 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 94 cm 53–147 cm, leanest to deepest of twelve |
Find a place to stay · Open in maps
"Find a place to stay" searches Rakuten Travel and contains advertising; we may earn a commission on bookings made through it. The snowfall figures and ranking are calculated independently of that.
We do not link to an official site. We have not verified URLs for all 79 towns, and guessing would send you somewhere wrong. They will be added once checked.
More places to look
Just the bath
Day passes for hot springs are sold through Asoview. Japanese only.
The list covers the whole prefecture — it cannot be narrowed to this town.
Hot springs nearby, as analysed
4 hot spring sources with published analyses lie within 3 km of the centre of this onsen town, nearest first.
| Source | Distance | Temperature | pH | Type | Analysed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 岳鉄山 | 1.2 km | 88.5℃ hot | 2.5 acidic | simple | — |
| 安達太良安達太良温泉開発 | 2.2 km | 31.5℃ lukewarm | 8.3 mildly alkaline | simple | — |
| 大玉 | 2.4 km | 45℃ hot | — | simple | — |
| 前が岳弥三郎温泉 | 2.8 km | — | — | — | — |
These are analyses of hot spring sources, not a list of baths you can visit. They date from 1910 to 2005, many from decades ago, so today’s temperature and chemistry may differ. Names are as recorded in Japanese. Temperature and pH bands follow Japan’s standard for analysing hot springs.
Source: processed from the hot spring analysis data in the Geothermal Information Database (GRES-DB), Geological Survey of Japan, AIST
Worth seeing nearby
Places within 20 km of this onsen town, chosen from those most read about on Wikipedia, favouring places with an English Wikipedia article, and listed nearest first.
| Place | Type | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Tohoku Safari Park東北サファリパーク | Museum | 4.9 km |
| Nihonmatsu Castle二本松城 | Historic site | 6.3 km |
| Mount Adatara安達太良山 | Mountain | 7.7 km |
| Tsuchiyu Onsen土湯温泉 | Hot spring town | 9.7 km |
| Mount Azuma-kofuji吾妻小富士 | Mountain | 17.6 km |
| Takayu Onsen高湯温泉 | Hot spring town | 17.6 km |
Based on the Japanese Wikipedia lists of sights in each prefecture, as compiled in travel-log-data (CC BY-SA 4.0). English names from Wikidata (CC0). The content of this section is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Ski areas nearby
Up to five within 40 km, straight-line, nearest first. Quality rank is out of the 397 Japanese ski areas.
| Ski area | Distance | Quality rank |
|---|---|---|
| Adatara Kogen Ski Resort | 5 km | 62 of 397 |
| Nihonmatsu Shiozawa | 5 km | 304 of 397 |
| Minowa Ski Resort | 10 km | 51 of 397 |
| Numajiri Ski | 11 km | 63 of 397 |
| Yokomuki Onsen Ski Area | 11 km | 58 of 397 |
These snowfall figures are estimates
The snowfall shown here is an estimate produced by a weather model, not a record of what actually fell.
We compared it against 63 Japan Meteorological Agency weather stations to see how far off it is. On average it comes to about six tenths of the real figure — it runs low. And it runs low by different amounts in different places: some read barely a third of what was measured, others match almost exactly. Mountains tend to read lowest.
We tried scaling everything up by a fixed amount to correct for it. It barely helped, because the error differs from place to place.
So treat these numbers as a guide to roughly where somewhere sits, not a precise figure. There is no meaning in the gap between first and second, or between 30th and 35th. Large differences between regions are real and can be read as they are.
We considered correcting the figures against the observations. But this ranking covers 3,069 ski areas across ten countries, and only Japan can be checked against weather stations. Correcting Japan alone would lift Japanese resorts above the Alps and North America with nothing behind it. Every place here is measured the same way instead.
Where a nearby weather station can be used, we print what it actually recorded on that ski area's own page.