Shirahone Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
白骨温泉 · Nagano
Shirahone Onsen (白骨温泉) is a nationally designated onsen town in Nagano. 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 mountain spring at about 1,400 m, high even by Japanese standards. The water is milky white, heavy with calcium bicarbonate dissolved out of limestone.
Even the name is disputed. One account says bathtubs were hollowed from whole tree trunks, and the minerals coated them white — hence shirafune, white boat. Another says branches left in the water calcified until they looked like bones — hence shirahone, white bone. Both names have been used for the same place.
It was known through the Edo period, but what made it famous was Nakazato Kaizan's novel Daibosatsu Toge, serialised in newspapers for roughly thirty years between 1913 and 1941.
Sources: 信州・白骨温泉 公式サイト「歴史と見所」 · 環境省 白骨温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 342 cm |
| Rank | 8 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 2 of 5 in Nagano |
| Against the median of 77 | +224 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 171 cm 258–429 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 白骨温泉奥田 | 0.1 km | 46.6℃ hot | 6.8 neutral | — | 1973 |
| 白骨温泉蛇穴 | 0.1 km | 44.9℃ hot | 6.4 neutral | — | 1968 |
| 白骨温泉エビス屋 | 0.1 km | 35.5℃ warm | 7.8 mildly alkaline | — | 1952 |
| 白骨温泉新宅旧 | 0.2 km | 44.8℃ hot | 6.3 neutral | — | 1966 |
| 白骨温泉大石館2号 | 0.2 km | 45.6℃ hot | 6.4 neutral | — | 1973 |
| 白骨温泉新宅新源泉1号 | 0.2 km | 49.8℃ hot | 6.5 neutral | sulphur, bicarbonate | 2004 |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Mount Norikura乗鞍岳 | Mountain | 8.3 km |
| Mount Yake焼岳 | Mountain | 9 km |
| Kamikōchi上高地 | Mountain | 10.5 km |
| Nomugi Pass野麦峠 | Mountain | 11.4 km |
| Hida Mountains飛騨山脈 | Mountain | 15.3 km |
| Hotaka Mountains穂高岳 | Mountain | 15.3 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Blue Resort Norikura | 4 km | 36 of 397 |
| Hirayu Onsen Ski Area | 7 km | 40 of 397 |
| Honokidaira Ski Area | 12 km | 91 of 397 |
| Shinshu-Matsumoto Nomugitoge Ski Resort | 15 km | 42 of 397 |
| Hida Takayama Municipal Ski Resort | 17 km | 86 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.