Odate Gurumi Onsen-kyo — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
大館ぐるみ温泉郷 · Akita
Odate Gurumi Onsen-kyo (大館ぐるみ温泉郷) is a nationally designated onsen town in Akita. 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
"Gurumi" means the whole city. This is not one spa town but every hot spring inside the city of Odate in Akita, designated together as a single National Health Resort Hot Spring. Very few entries on this list work that way.
What it covers is quite a spread. Otaki, in the south-east, was used as a cure resort by the lords of the Akita domain and has the longest history in the prefecture. Okuzo is said to have been found in 1599 or 1602, at the foot of the Okuzo gold mine — the mine was worked until 1975. Yatate sits on the Aomori border at a pass known for its stands of natural Akita cedar. Tashiro is a single inn below Mount Tashiro to the west. There are others in the town itself and at Yukisawa.
People have lived in this basin since the Jomon period. The Northern Fujiwara held it in the twelfth century, then retainers of the Kai Genji. In 1602 Oba Yoshinari arrived from Hitachi province, and his line governed Odate for the next 260 years.
We do rank this entry, but the coordinate we measure is the centre of the city. Since the designation covers the whole city, that is the honest unit — though the springs up in the hills certainly see more snow than this figure shows.
Sources: 環境省 大館ぐるみ温泉郷 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 163 cm |
| Rank | 30 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 3 of 3 in Akita |
| Against the median of 77 | +45 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 117 cm 107–224 cm, leanest to deepest of twelve |
This designation covers the whole of 大館市 rather than a single spa town (矢立・大滝など市内の温泉群の総称), so the snowfall is measured at the centre of the municipality.
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
5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 東台 | 0.8 km | — | — | — | — |
| 大文字 | 0.9 km | — | — | — | — |
| 柄沢柄沢 | 1.6 km | — | — | — | — |
| 富留沢 | 2.6 km | 31℃ lukewarm | — | — | — |
| 沼館沼館 | 2.6 km | 44℃ hot | 8.5 alkaline | — | — |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Akita Inu Hozonkai秋田犬保存会 | Nature | 0.2 km |
| Akita Dog Visitor Center秋田犬の里 | Museum | 1.8 km |
| Nipro Hachiko Dome大館樹海ドーム | Leisure | 2.9 km |
| Nagabashiri Fuketsu長走風穴 | Nature | 12.8 km |
| Kosaka Station小坂駅 | Landmark | 16.4 km |
| Isedōtai Site伊勢堂岱遺跡 | Historic site | 20 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Fujisato Choei Ski Area | 24 km | 377 of 397 |
| Hanawa Ski Area | 24 km | 197 of 397 |
| Yakushiyama Ski Area | 25 km | 421 of 397 |
| Owani Onsen Ski Resort International Area | 26 km | 217 of 397 |
| Ani Yuguchinai Ski Area | 32 km | 294 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.