Hijiori Onsen-kyo — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
肘折温泉郷 · Yamagata
Hijiori Onsen-kyo (肘折温泉郷) is a nationally designated onsen town in Yamagata. 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
Hijiori Onsen-kyo is the collective name for three springs — Hijiori, Kogane and Ishidaki. It sits in Okura, a village of about 3,000 people in northern Yamagata, the smallest municipality in the prefecture.
The spring is said to date from 807. It grew as a starting point for pilgrims climbing the Three Mountains of Dewa, and it still feels like a toji town — a place people come to soak for days rather than overnight.
And it is buried in snow. Of the 184 Japan Meteorological Agency stations we checked, Hijiori was second only to Sukayu — 985 cm a winter averaged over three seasons. The village has turned that into events: a festival of giant snow figures and fireworks, a corridor carved through the snowpack, and — genuinely — a World Cup for digging. Competitors dig down through more than four metres of snow, and whoever reaches bare ground first wins.
Beside the town stands the Hijiori dam, a 1952 cobble-concrete flood-control structure listed as a registered tangible cultural property since 2009. Water falling over it has become part of the view.
The main water is a sodium chloride–bicarbonate spring. Kogane, 1.5 km west, is named for the gold mine whose workers settled there; its bath was in use from the late Meiji period into the 1920s.
Sources: 環境省 肘折温泉郷 国民保養温泉地計画書（令和5年3月） · 湯の里 肘折温泉
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 421 cm |
| Rank | 4 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 1 of 8 in Yamagata |
| Against the median of 77 | +303 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 351 cm 201–552 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 肘折組合泉2号 | 0.3 km | 83.8℃ hot | 6.9 neutral | — | — |
| 金山金山部落共同 | 0.9 km | 53.5℃ hot | 7.6 mildly alkaline | — | — |
| 黄金組合4号 | 1.2 km | 75.2℃ hot | 7.6 mildly alkaline | — | — |
| 石抱 | 1.3 km | 37℃ warm | 6.5 neutral | — | — |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Hijiori Onsen肘折温泉 | Hot spring town | 0.3 km |
| Mount Gassan月山 | Mountain | 13.6 km |
| Yudonosan Shrine湯殿山神社 | Shrine | 17.2 km |
| Three Mountains of Dewa出羽三山 | Mountain | 17.7 km |
| Mount Yudono湯殿山 (山形県) | Mountain | 17.8 km |
| Mount Haguro羽黒山 (山形県) | Mountain | 19 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Mount Gassan Ski Resort | 16 km | 20 of 397 |
| Hagurosan Ski Area | 18 km | 282 of 397 |
| Hanagasa Kogen Ski Area | 31 km | 220 of 397 |
| Asahi Shizenkan Snow Park | 35 km | 240 of 397 |
| Kurobushi Kogen Snow Park Jangle Jungle | 38 km | 98 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.