Rurikei Kogen Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
るり渓高原温泉 · Kyoto
Rurikei Kogen Onsen (るり渓高原温泉) is a nationally designated onsen town in Kyoto. 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
Ruri Valley runs about four kilometres up the Sonobe river in Nantan, Kyoto, a gorge cut into high ground at around 500 metres, with a celebrated set of waterfalls and strange rocks along it.
The name has a clear origin. Ruri is lapis lazuli, the deep violet-blue stone. A district official visiting in the Meiji era is said to have been so struck by the place that he named it after the gem.
It was made a national site of scenic beauty in 1932, and about twenty hectares became a Kyoto prefectural park in 1949. In 1996 it was chosen for the government's list of a hundred soundscapes of Japan worth keeping — selected by ear rather than by eye, which suits a gorge like this one.
The hot water itself is recent, drilled in 1985 and again in 1996: a radioactive spring yielding 275 litres a minute at 23–24.2 °C. In May 2000 it became the 89th National Health Resort Hot Spring.
There is a highland garden modelled on the Butchart Gardens in Canada, trout fishing on the reservoir, and glamping. Some 280,000 people a year come out from Kyoto and Osaka — 35 km northwest of one, 50 km north of the other.
Sources: 環境省 るり渓高原温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 28 cm |
| Rank | 56 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 2 of 2 in Kyoto |
| Against the median of 77 | -90 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 49 cm 3–52 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| るり渓鉱泉るり渓シャレー温泉第1源泉 | 2.4 km | 13.3℃ cold | 7.4 neutral | — | 1978 |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Rurikeiるり渓 | Nature | 0.7 km |
| Mount Miyama深山 (大阪府・京都府) | Mountain | 2.1 km |
| Yakami Castle八上城 | Historic site | 13.3 km |
| Izumo-daijingū出雲大神宮 | Shrine | 16.7 km |
| Sasayama Castle篠山城 | Historic site | 17 km |
| Kyoto Stadiumサンガスタジアム by KYOCERA | Leisure | 17.1 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.