Shima Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
四万温泉 · Gunma
Shima Onsen (四万温泉) is a nationally designated onsen town in Gunma. 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
A long, narrow spa town strung along the Shima river gorge in north-western Gunma, at 600–700 m inside Joshinetsu-kogen National Park. It is made of five districts, of which Hinatami is the oldest.
The spring is traced to around 989. Inns appear in the sixteenth century, and by the seventeenth the town had roughly the shape it has now. It thrived as a cure town through the Meiji period.
In 1954 Shima was designated one of the first National Health Resort Hot Springs — not alone, but simultaneously with Sukayu in Aomori and Nikko-Yumoto in Tochigi. The programme this whole list belongs to began with these three.
There are 42 sources here, 38 of them still in use. Most rise on their own, at between 27 and 83°C, together yielding 3,000–4,000 litres a minute.
Hinatami holds the Yakushido, a hall designated an Important Cultural Property, and the district still feels like a place people came to stay and be treated. The valley is ringed by 1,500-metre peaks and three well-known waterfalls.
Sources: 環境省 四万温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 174 cm |
| Rank | 26 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 1 of 3 in Gunma |
| Against the median of 77 | +56 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 287 cm 102–389 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
2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 四万滝の湯(新湯地区) | 0.3 km | 83℃ hot | 6.8 neutral | — | — |
| 新四万鳥の湯 | 2.9 km | 36.5℃ warm | 7.7 mildly 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Shimagawa Dam四万川ダム | Landmark | 1.3 km |
| Iwabitsu Castle岩櫃城 | Historic site | 14.3 km |
| Yanba Dam八ッ場ダム | Landmark | 15.3 km |
| Kusatsu Onsen草津温泉 | Hot spring town | 17.3 km |
| Nagurumi Castle名胡桃城 | Historic site | 19.5 km |
| Marble Village Lockheart Castle大理石村ロックハート城 | 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Naeba | 12 km | 54 of 397 |
| Norn Minakami | 16 km | 87 of 397 |
| Kagura | 18 km | 34 of 397 |
| Tashiro Area | 18 km | 12 of 397 |
| Kusatsu Onsen Ski Resort | 19 km | 84 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.