Yutagawa Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
湯田川温泉 · Yamagata
Yutagawa Onsen (湯田川温泉) 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
At the south-western corner of the Shonai plain, on the western foot of Mount Kinbo outside Tsuruoka. From the higher ground you can see Mount Chokai.
The spring is dated to 712, making it the oldest in the Shonai region. The story is of a badly injured white heron that bathed in a marsh here and healed. Edo-period rankings of Japan's hot springs placed it near the top.
Under the domain it was where the samurai of Shonai came to rest, and where farmers came to stay for weeks at a time; it was busiest in the agricultural off-season. A local kagura dance has been handed down here and is still performed.
It chose the opposite road to Yunohama, twenty kilometres away in the same city. Yunohama grew into a pleasure town and was counted among the three such places in the north. Yutagawa's own plan, submitted to the Ministry of the Environment, states as policy that it will prevent itself from becoming one.
The water is a sodium-calcium sulphate spring: clear, without taste or smell, and cool enough to sit in for a long time.
Sources: 環境省 湯田川温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 243 cm |
| Rank | 15 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 5 of 8 in Yamagata |
| Against the median of 77 | +125 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 303 cm 127–430 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 湯田川1号 | 0.1 km | 43.4℃ hot | 8.6 alkaline | — | — |
| 下清水今間源泉 | 2.8 km | 31.7℃ lukewarm | 8.7 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Chidō Museum致道博物館 | Museum | 6 km |
| Chidōkan致道館 | Historic site | 6.2 km |
| Kamo Aquarium鶴岡市立加茂水族館 | Museum | 8.6 km |
| Zenpō-ji Temple善寳寺 | Temple | 8.9 km |
| Yunohama Onsen湯野浜温泉 | Hot spring town | 10.3 km |
| Atsumi Onsenあつみ温泉 | Hot spring town | 16.2 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 | 9 km | 449 of 397 |
| Hagurosan Ski Area | 19 km | 282 of 397 |
| Mount Gassan Ski Resort | 28 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.