Yura Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
由良温泉 · Yamagata
Yura Onsen (由良温泉) is a nationally designated onsen town in Yamagata. 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
On the Sea of Japan coast in Tsuruoka, Yamagata. The shore here appears on two national lists at once — one of Japan's hundred finest beaches, and the Ministry of the Environment's hundred cleanest swimming waters.
About fifty metres offshore stands Hakusan island, joined to the land by a vermilion bridge. The sun setting into the sea behind that island is what people come for. The place also carries the legend of the Yaotome shore.
As a spa it is small — eight places to stay across about twenty hectares — but the beach, the surfing, the fishing harbour, the rocks and the fishing pond all sit within a few minutes of each other.
Tsuruoka has four designated onsen towns. Yunohama, Yutagawa, Atsumi and this one. Three of the four are on the coast; only Yutagawa is inland. No other municipality on this list of 79 holds more than two.
Sources: 環境省 由良温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 213 cm |
| Rank | 21 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 7 of 8 in Yamagata |
| Against the median of 77 | +95 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 351 cm 79–430 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 由良市営源泉 | 0.7 km | 18.9℃ cold | 8.3 mildly alkaline | simple | — |
| 油戸 | 2.9 km | 17℃ cold | 7.4 neutral | sulphur | — |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Kamo Aquarium鶴岡市立加茂水族館 | Museum | 5.1 km |
| 湯田川温泉 | Hot spring town | 6.8 km |
| Zenpō-ji Temple善寳寺 | Temple | 8.3 km |
| Chidō Museum致道博物館 | Museum | 10.6 km |
| Chidōkan致道館 | Historic site | 11.1 km |
| Atsumi Onsenあつみ温泉 | Hot spring town | 14 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Hachimoriyama Ski Area | 5 km | 449 of 397 |
| Hagurosan Ski Area | 25 km | 282 of 397 |
| Mount Gassan Ski Resort | 34 km | 20 of 397 |
| Budoh Snow Resort | 39 km | 274 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.