Tsuchiyu and Takayu Onsen-kyo — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
土湯・高湯温泉郷 · Fukushima
Tsuchiyu and Takayu Onsen-kyo (土湯・高湯温泉郷) is a nationally designated onsen town in Fukushima. 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
Two spa districts on the eastern skirt of the Azuma mountains, west of Fukushima city, both inside Bandai-Asahi National Park.
Takayu here is the same Takayu as Zao. Zao Onsen was once called Takayu too, and together with this one — Shinobu-Takayu — and Shirabu-Takayu near Yonezawa, the three were spoken of as a set. Three springs of the same name, strung across the north.
Tsuchiyu lies 16 km south-west of Fukushima station, on the Ara river at about 450 m, with eighteen inns and hotels. Its sources sit two kilometres further upstream, where steam and water come out of the ground at around 130°C. Spring water is added to bring it down, and about 1,400 litres a minute run down to the town, day and night, without stopping.
After the 2011 earthquake, this town decided to make electricity out of its hot water. A binary power plant, running since November 2015, uses an existing source to generate — and the water is unchanged by it, so it goes on to the baths afterwards. With a small hydro plant alongside, the recovery here has been built on what was already coming out of the ground.
Sources: 環境省 土湯・高湯温泉郷 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 170 cm |
| Rank | 28 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 1 of 2 in Fukushima |
| Against the median of 77 | +52 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 112 cm 122–234 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
1 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 土湯第1号 | 0.1 km | 95.2℃ hot | 8.9 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Tsuchiyu Onsen土湯温泉 | Hot spring town | 0.4 km |
| Mount Adatara安達太良山 | Mountain | 6.6 km |
| Takayu Onsen高湯温泉 | Hot spring town | 7.7 km |
| Mount Azuma-kofuji吾妻小富士 | Mountain | 8.6 km |
| Nihonmatsu Castle二本松城 | Historic site | 12.8 km |
| Fukushima Race Course福島競馬場 | Leisure | 16.5 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Nihonmatsu Shiozawa | 5 km | 304 of 397 |
| Yokomuki Onsen Ski Area | 7 km | 58 of 397 |
| Adatara Kogen Ski Resort | 7 km | 62 of 397 |
| Minowa Ski Resort | 7 km | 51 of 397 |
| Numajiri Ski | 10 km | 63 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.