Kirishima Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
霧島温泉 · Kagoshima
Kirishima Onsen (霧島温泉) is a nationally designated onsen town in Kagoshima. 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
Spread across a plateau between 400 and 910 metres on the southeastern flank of the Kirishima range, looking south over Kagoshima Bay. The area divides into two groups of springs, each about 10 km²: one scattered through the mountains, one gathered around the Kirishima shrine.
The national park that contains it was among the very first designated in Japan, in 1934. A line of volcanoes rises to the north. The shrine is dedicated to Ninigi, the grandson of the sun goddess in the myth of the descent from heaven.
This is also where the first honeymoon in Japan is said to have been taken. In 1866 Sakamoto Ryoma came here with his wife Oryo. The route they walked has been laid out as a 45-kilometre "honeymoon road" with 57 markers, and every March more than three thousand people walk it together.
Cherries in early April, wild azalea in early summer, maples in autumn — and in winter the whole plateau turns to rime ice. It is the only certified forest-therapy base in Kagoshima, with four marked routes through the woods.
Sources: 環境省 霧島温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 2 cm |
| Rank | 75 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 1 of 2 in Kagoshima |
| Against the median of 77 | -116 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 5 cm 0–5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 間手原間手原ラムネ | 3 km | 47.5℃ hot | 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Kagoshima Jingū鹿児島神宮 | Shrine | 12.8 km |
| Kirishima Jingū霧島神宮 | Shrine | 13 km |
| Mount Karakuni韓国岳 | Mountain | 14.1 km |
| Mount Kirishima霧島山 | Mountain | 14.1 km |
| Shinmoedake新燃岳 | Mountain | 15.1 km |
| Hishikari mine菱刈鉱山 | Mountain | 16.5 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
No ski area on this site lies within 40 km.
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.