Mitsuo Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
三丘温泉 · Yamaguchi
Mitsuo Onsen (三丘温泉) is a nationally designated onsen town in Yamaguchi. 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 the Kumage district of Shunan, southeastern Yamaguchi. The name Mitsuo is said to come from three hills that once stood here. Seven kilometres northwest is a basin where hooded cranes — a special natural monument — arrive each winter.
A spring in the bed of the Shimada river carries a story: a wounded crane flew in and healed itself there. Boatmen carrying timber and rice downriver are also remembered warming their hands and feet at the bank in winter. People had long suspected hot water was under this ground.
But the source was not actually found until 1955. As spa towns go this one is young; it was designated in 1961.
Five establishments use the water today, and the mix of them is unusual: one day-use bath, one inn — and two nursing-care facilities and a low-cost home for the elderly. Here the word "health resort" sits very close to ordinary daily life.
Almost all of the area lies within a prefectural natural park. A walking path and a line of cherry trees run along the stream, and fireflies come out in June.
Sources: 環境省 三丘温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 3 cm |
| Rank | 69 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 2 of 2 in Yamaguchi |
| Against the median of 77 | -115 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 9 cm 0–9 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 三丘温泉熊毛町有3号泉 | 0.1 km | 35℃ warm | 8.74 alkaline | sulphur | 1969 |
| 三丘温泉熊毛町有1号泉 | 0.5 km | 38.5℃ warm | 8.7 alkaline | sulphur, radioactive (radon) | 1956 |
| 三丘温泉熊毛町有2号泉 | 0.5 km | 18℃ cold | 6.8 neutral | radioactive (radon) | 1958 |
| 呼鶴温泉藤井泉 | 2.6 km | 19℃ cold | 7.6 mildly alkaline | radioactive (radon) | 1968 |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Nijigahama虹ヶ浜海水浴場 | Nature | 10.2 km |
| 室積海岸 | Nature | 10.8 km |
| Hiroshima Toyo Carp Yuu Baseball Ground広島東洋カープ由宇練習場 | Leisure | 14.1 km |
| Tokuyama Zoo周南市徳山動物園 | Museum | 16.7 km |
| Kasadojima笠戸島 | Nature | 18.9 km |
| Oshima Bridge大島大橋 (山口県) | Landmark | 19.6 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
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.