Iwai Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
岩井温泉 · Tottori
Iwai Onsen (岩井温泉) is a nationally designated onsen town in Tottori. 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
In Iwami, Tottori. The spring is dated to 859, which would make it the oldest in the San'in region.
The story goes like this. In the reign of Emperor Seiwa, a man named Fujiwara no Fuyuhisa, a descendant of Fujiwara no Fuyutsugu, suffered from a skin disease while still young. He was told where to find the water in a vision of the Medicine Buddha, cured himself, settled here, and spent the rest of his life helping others with the same affliction.
Iwai has kept its own way of bathing, called yukamuri. You put a folded towel on your head, fill a wooden dipper, and pour the water over yourself. The custom dates from the end of the Edo period, and the explanation given is that it lets you stay in the bath longer. Very few onsen have handed down a method of bathing rather than just the bath.
Sources: 環境省 岩井温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書 · 岩美町公式サイト
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 198 cm |
| Rank | 23 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 1 of 3 in Tottori |
| Against the median of 77 | +80 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 247 cm 53–300 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
11 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 岩井温泉共同浴場 | 0 km | 50℃ hot | 7.4 neutral | — | 1951 |
| 岩井温泉花屋 | 0.1 km | 47℃ hot | 7.4 neutral | — | 1951 |
| 岩井温泉 | 0.1 km | 30.5℃ lukewarm | 7.4 neutral | — | 1951 |
| 岩井温泉岩井屋 | 0.1 km | 50℃ hot | 7.4 neutral | — | 1951 |
| 岩井温泉かみの湯 | 0.1 km | 48℃ hot | 7.4 neutral | — | 1951 |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Uradome Coast浦富海岸 | Nature | 7.2 km |
| Sand Museum砂の美術館 | Museum | 11.3 km |
| Yumura Onsen湯村温泉 (兵庫県) | Hot spring town | 11.6 km |
| Ube Shrine宇倍神社 | Shrine | 11.8 km |
| Tottori Sand Dunes鳥取砂丘 | Nature | 12 km |
| Tottori Castle鳥取城 | Historic site | 12.1 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Tajima Farm Park Ski Area | 13 km | 385 of 397 |
| Ojiro Ski Resort | 18 km | 329 of 397 |
| Hachikita Kogen | 22 km | 279 of 397 |
| Mikata Snow Park | 22 km | 297 of 397 |
| Hachikogen Ski Resort | 24 km | 226 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.