Iwamuro Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
岩室温泉 · Niigata
Iwamuro Onsen (岩室温泉) is a nationally designated onsen town in Niigata. 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 Iwamuro village land survey of 1598 already records a place called Yu-no-koshi — the hot water. By 1713 there were thirty-seven bathhouses paying a levy as a licensed guild, so the town in its present form was already there.
Its other name is Reigan-no-yu, the bath of the sacred goose. In 1713, the story goes, a white-haired old man appeared in the village headman's dream and told him where to look. Following the instruction, he found a wounded goose sitting in a stream of hot water, healing itself — and that is how the source was found. The village chronicle records it as a tale, and there is no way to check it.
By the late Edo period, written accounts of the visitors who came here to take the waters had carried the name across the country.
It was designated a National Health Resort in April 1963, together with the nearby Yahiko and Kannonji springs. In September 2018 the designation was narrowed to Iwamuro alone.
Sources: 環境省 岩室温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 131 cm |
| Rank | 35 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 4 of 4 in Niigata |
| Against the median of 77 | +13 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 189 cm 38–227 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
1 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 岩室鉱泉岩室鉱泉 | 0.6 km | 19℃ cold | 7.2 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Sado-Yahiko-Yoneyama Quasi-National Park佐渡弥彦米山国定公園 | Nature | 2.2 km |
| Yahiko Shrine彌彦神社 | Shrine | 3.4 km |
| Yahikoyama Ropeway弥彦山ロープウェイ | Nature | 3.5 km |
| Mount Yahiko弥彦山 | Mountain | 3.7 km |
| Mount Kakuda角田山 | Mountain | 5 km |
| Cave d'Occi, Niigataカーブドッチ | Landmark | 7.6 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Fuyudorigoe Ski Garden | 27 km | 395 of 397 |
| Nagaoka City Ski Area | 36 km | 337 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.