Sukayu Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
酸ヶ湯温泉 · Aomori
Sukayu Onsen (酸ヶ湯温泉) is a nationally designated onsen town in Aomori. 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 1684 a hunter from what is now Aomori City tracked a wounded deer up into the Hakkoda mountains. He found it three days later — healed, and climbing away over the rocks. Wondering what had mended it, he went looking, and found the spring. For a long time it was called Shika-no-yu, the deer's bath. That is the story told here; it is a legend, not a record.
In 1954 Sukayu was among the first three places designated National Health Resort Hot Springs — together with Shima in Gunma and Nikko-Yumoto in Tochigi. The list this page belongs to exists because of that programme, and this is where it began.
The bath is a single room of hinoki cypress, roughly 260 square metres, and it is still mixed. Of the 184 Japan Meteorological Agency stations we checked, the snowiest was Sukayu, 3.5 km from here — 1,292 cm a winter averaged over three seasons.
Sources: 酸ヶ湯温泉旅館 公式サイト「温泉の歴史」 · 日本温泉協会 国民保養温泉地 · 環境省 奥日光湯元温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 371 cm |
| Rank | 6 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Against the median of 77 | +253 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 315 cm 154–469 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 酸ケ湯ふかしの湯 | 0.2 km | 90.7℃ hot | 1 acidic | iron, acidic | — |
| 城ケ倉3号泉 | 1.3 km | 51℃ hot | 7.3 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Sukayu Onsen酸ヶ湯 | Hot spring town | 0.1 km |
| Hakkōda Mountains八甲田山 | Mountain | 2.4 km |
| Hakkōda Ropeway八甲田ロープウェー | Nature | 3.7 km |
| Tsuta Onsen蔦温泉 | Hot spring town | 10.5 km |
| Komakino Site小牧野遺跡 | Historic site | 14.1 km |
| Oirase Steam奥入瀬渓流 | Nature | 17.4 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Hakkoda Kokusai Ski Area | 3 km | 26 of 397 |
| Moya Hills | 10 km | 112 of 397 |
| Owani Onsen Ski Resort International Area | 29 km | 217 of 397 |
| Makado Onsen | 30 km | 384 of 397 |
| Yogoshiyama Ski Area | 32 km | 383 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.