Sekigane Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
関金温泉 · Tottori
Sekigane Onsen (関金温泉) is a nationally designated onsen town in Tottori. 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 southern Kurayoshi, Tottori, on the north-eastern skirt of the Hiruzen plateau below Mount Daisen.
Three separate stories are told about how it was found, and none has won.
The oldest has the monk Gyoki noticing a crane bathing here in the year 717. Another, the eguimo legend, credits a travelling monk — Kobo Daishi — and involves a taro that grows wild in these fields. A mineral-springs gazetteer published in 1886 says instead that it was found between 782 and 806. The dates disagree by ninety years, but all three put it in the Nara period.
The place name, on the other hand, came from the spring. Two villages stood here until the early Meiji era, Yu-no-seki and Kanaya. One character was taken from each to name the spring Sekigane — and the town was then named after the spring. Here the water named the place, rather than the other way round.
In the Edo period this was a post station on the road linking Hoki province to the Sanyo coast, with a barrier gate. The water is completely clear, and for that it was long called the silver bath; a mid-Edo document simply calls it Silver Spring.
Sources: 環境省 関金温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 128 cm |
| Rank | 36 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 2 of 3 in Tottori |
| Against the median of 77 | +10 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 143 cm 47–190 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
16 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 関金温泉 | 0.8 km | 43.1℃ hot | 7.9 mildly alkaline | — | 1963 |
| 関金温泉青年研修所 | 0.9 km | 45℃ hot | 7.9 mildly alkaline | — | 1961 |
| 関金温泉町有1号 | 0.9 km | — | — | — | 1990 |
| 関金温泉町有4号 | 0.9 km | — | — | — | 1990 |
| 関金温泉町有7号 (川崎) | 0.9 km | — | — | — | 1986 |
| 関金温泉関の湯 | 1.1 km | 51.1℃ hot | 7.9 mildly alkaline | — | 1957 |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Daisen-Oki National Park大山隠岐国立公園 | Nature | 9.1 km |
| Misasa Onsen三朝温泉 | Hot spring town | 13.4 km |
| Mount Senjō (Tottori)船上山 | Mountain | 16.1 km |
| Enchō-en燕趙園 | Park | 16.6 km |
| Hawai Onsenはわい温泉 | Hot spring town | 16.8 km |
| Daisen大山 (鳥取県) | Mountain | 19.4 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Ski & Board Resort Tsuguro Kogen | 13 km | 424 of 397 |
| Kagamiganaru Ski Area | 15 km | 310 of 397 |
| OkuDaisen Ski resort | 18 km | 322 of 397 |
| Hiruzen Bear Valley Ski Resort | 19 km | 371 of 397 |
| Daisen White Resort | 20 km | 359 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.