Seki and Tsubame Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
関・燕温泉 · Niigata
Seki and Tsubame Onsen (関・燕温泉) 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
Two springs on the flank of Mount Myoko. They come out of the same mountain in different colours.
Seki, at about 900 m, carries iron. The water leaves the ground clear and turns red-brown in the air. It is credited to Toyoda Gotayu of Sekiyama village in 1729, which makes it the oldest of the Myoko springs.
Tsubame, at about 1,100 m, is the highest in the Myoko group, and its water is white. The name comes from the swallows that used to gather on the rock faces; formal development began in 1875. Two free open-air baths, Kawara-no-yu and Ogon-no-yu, sit above the village.
Both are also credited to Kobo Daishi, as many Japanese springs are. Five minutes apart by car — one red, one white.
Sources: 妙高観光局 妙高高原温泉郷 · 日本温泉協会 国民保養温泉地「関・燕」
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 446 cm |
| Rank | 3 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 2 of 4 in Niigata |
| Against the median of 77 | +328 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 287 cm 273–560 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 関河原湯 | 0.5 km | 52℃ hot | 6.7 neutral | — | — |
| 燕北地獄谷 | 1.9 km | 47.5℃ hot | 6.7 neutral | — | — |
| 白滝白瀧温泉 | 2.2 km | — | — | simple | — |
| 赤倉・新赤倉元湯 | 2.8 km | 53.5℃ hot | 6.4 neutral | simple | — |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Tsubame Onsen燕温泉 | Hot spring town | 1.1 km |
| Mount Myōkō妙高山 | Mountain | 4.2 km |
| Mount Kurohime黒姫山 (長野県) | Mountain | 10.2 km |
| Lake Nojiri野尻湖 | Nature | 10.3 km |
| Mount Togakushi戸隠山 | Mountain | 17.3 km |
| Togakushi Shrine戸隠神社 | Shrine | 18.9 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Seki Onsen Ski Area | 0 km | 30 of 397 |
| Akakura Onsen Ski Area | 1 km | 95 of 397 |
| Akakura Kanko Ski Resort | 1 km | 94 of 397 |
| Kyukamura Myoko | 1 km | 107 of 397 |
| Ikenotaira Onsen Alpen Blick Ski Resort | 3 km | 75 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.