Tazawako Kogen Onsen-kyo — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
田沢湖高原温泉郷 · Akita
Tazawako Kogen Onsen-kyo (田沢湖高原温泉郷) is a nationally designated onsen town in Akita. 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
At the south-western corner of Towada-Hachimantai National Park, this covers Nyuto Onsen and Tazawako Kogen Onsen. Behind them stand Akita-Komagatake, at 1,637 m the highest mountain in Akita, and Nyuto-san. Nyuto means breast, which is what the mountain looks like from here. Seen from Iwate on the other side it looks like a courtier's cap, and there it is called Eboshi. The same mountain has two names depending on which prefecture you are standing in.
Below lies Lake Tazawa — 423.4 m deep, the deepest lake in Japan, an almost circular caldera about 20 km around.
Nyuto is seven separate springs scattered at the foot of the mountain: Kuroyu, Magoroku, Ogama, Taenoyu, Ganiba, Tsuru-no-yu and the Kyukamura. All seven have different water. Flow ranges from 10 to 650 litres a minute and temperature from 30 to 86°C. It has been a place people came to soak for weeks, not nights.
Tazawako Kogen draws its water down from Nyuto — milky white, simple sulphur. A six-kilometre pipeline from the Karabuki source is what allowed the village to form at all.
In summer it is the base for climbing Akita-Komagatake; in winter, for skiing. A moguls World Cup was held here for three years from 2015.
Sources: 環境省 田沢湖高原温泉郷 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 303 cm |
| Rank | 12 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 2 of 3 in Akita |
| Against the median of 77 | +185 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 212 cm 220–432 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
3 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 水沢 | 0.1 km | 44.8℃ hot | 6.4 neutral | — | — |
| 田沢湖高原1・2・4号混合泉 | 1.8 km | 49.7℃ hot | 5.1 mildly acidic | sulphur | — |
| 田沢日東オプチカル | 3 km | 43.8℃ hot | 7.5 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Akita-Komagatake秋田駒ヶ岳 | Mountain | 4.4 km |
| Nyuto Spa Resort乳頭温泉郷 | Hot spring town | 4.6 km |
| 国見温泉 | Hot spring town | 5.4 km |
| Lake Tazawa田沢湖 | Nature | 8.9 km |
| Tamagawa Dam玉川ダム (秋田県) | Nature | 12.1 km |
| Matsukawa Geothermal Power Plant松川地熱発電所 | Landmark | 18.7 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Tazawako Ski Resort | 2 km | 102 of 397 |
| Shizukuishi Ski Resort | 14 km | 56 of 397 |
| Amihari Onsen Ski Resort | 17 km | 31 of 397 |
| Iwate Kogen Snow Park | 19 km | 52 of 397 |
| Hachimantai Resort Shimokura Ski area | 22 km | 47 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.