Iwai Onsen
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 3,108 ski areas on this site.
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 231 cm |
| Rank | 20 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 1 of 3 in Tottori |
| Against the median of 77 | +112 cm median 119 cm |
| Season to season | 168 cm 132–300 cm across three winters |
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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.
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
Ski areas nearby
Up to five within 40 km, straight-line, nearest first. Quality rank is out of the 395 Japanese ski areas.
| Ski area | Distance | Quality rank |
|---|---|---|
| Tajima Farm Park Ski Area | 13 km | 335 of 395 |
| Ojiro Ski Resort | 18 km | 308 of 395 |
| Hachikita Kogen | 22 km | 257 of 395 |
| Mikata Snow Park | 22 km | 275 of 395 |
| Hachikogen Ski Resort | 24 km | 209 of 395 |
About these snowfall figures
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 are working on replacing these estimates with observed values.