Zao Onsen

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Zao sits at about 880 m on the western flank of the Zao mountains, and claims nineteen centuries. It used to be called Takayu, and together with Shinobu-Takayu in Fukushima and Shirabu-Takayu near Yonezawa it was known as one of the three great Takayu of the north.

The name has a story. Around the year 110, a retainer named Kibi-no-Tagayu, campaigning in the north under Yamato Takeru, was struck by a poisoned arrow and his whole body broke out in sores. He found water that tasted faintly of vinegar, bathed in it, and recovered within days. The spring was called Tagayu after him, and over time that became Takayu.

Through the Edo period this was the western climbing route to the Zao shrine, lined with lodgings for ascetics. When the Meiji government moved against Buddhist institutions the ascetics disappeared almost overnight and Zao went quiet again. Skiers only arrived in the twentieth century, once the mountain was promoted as good winter terrain.

Five source groups feed 46 springs, all of it flowing straight through — strongly acidic sulphur water. Walk the streets and you smell it. It has long been called a bath that makes your skin better.

The ski area above it, famous for its juhyo ice-covered trees, is reached by three ropeways from the town.

Sources: 環境省 蔵王温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書

Up to five within 40 km, straight-line, nearest first. Quality rank is out of the 395 Japanese ski areas.

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 are working on replacing these estimates with observed values.

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