Onsen in Chugoku, Japan — 55 Hot Springs

Tottori · 12

Misasa Onsen What draws people to Misasa is not spectacle but chemistry — in the most literal sense.
Yoshioka Onsen In Tottori Prefecture, set within a basin ringed by mountains, Yoshioka Onsen has been receiving bathers for over a thou
Daisen Kyara Onsen There is only one inn here.
Daisen Onsen The water here rises cold from the earth — 18.6 degrees, a chill that carries its own kind of clarity.
Iwai Onsen The waters here have been rising from the earth since 859, or so the story goes—a courtier named Fujiwara no Fuyuhisa is
Kishimoto Onsen There is nothing ancient about Kishimoto Onsen.
Togo Onsen The lake is the thing.
Hamamura Onsen The train on the San'in Main Line stops at Hamamura, and the onsen quarter begins almost immediately — right there, acro
Yodoe Yume Onsen The San'in coast of Tottori Prefecture has a way of asking you to slow down before you quite realize you've been rushing
Hawai Onsen The name catches you off guard — Hawai, in Tottori Prefecture, far from any Pacific beach.
Kaike Onsen Along the shore of the Sea of Japan, where the curved sand of Yumi-ga-hama meets the city of Yonago, a row of large hote
Shikano Onsen In Tottori Prefecture, at the foot of Mount Washūzan, a cluster of hot springs feeds quietly into a small settlement tha

Sanbe Onsen At the southern foot of Mount Sanbe, in the Shimane interior that most travelers never quite reach, a small cluster of b
Izumo Yumura Onsen The Hii River moves quietly through Unnan, and at Izumo Yumura the water rises from its very bed.
Chihara Onsen In the mountains of Shimane, along the Chihara River — a tributary feeding into the larger Gōnokawa — there is a bathhou
Otani Onsen The story begins, as many things in rural Japan do, with an animal.
Hirose Onsen
Hinokamigami Onsen At the foot of Sentsūzan, in the inland reaches of Shimane Prefecture, there is a small cluster of accommodation that mo
Asahi Onsen The waters at Asahi Onsen have a quality that announces itself immediately — a softness, a faint slip against the skin t
Arifuku Onsen In Shimane Prefecture, wedged between the small cities of Gōtsu and Hamada, a slope of hillside holds a cluster of inns
Kimachi Onsen
Matsue Shinjiko Onsen The water here was found not by accident but by intention — a borehole sunk 1,250 meters into the earth in 1971, reachin
Yunotsu Onsen Yunotsu sits where a narrow valley meets the coast of Shimane, a town that once existed for silver and now exists, it se
Tamatsukuri Onsen There are hot spring towns in Japan that feel like discoveries, and others that feel like appointments — places that hav

Sakushu Musashi Onsen At the foot of the Chugoku Mountains in Mimasaka, the land settles into a particular kind of quiet — the quiet of a plac
Kurashiki Yuga Onsen Fifteen kilometers from the city of Kurashiki, the mountain flank of Yugasan holds a single inn.
Yahata Onsen
Kibiji Onsen
Wake Ukaidani Onsen There is a particular kind of place in Japan that announces itself without ceremony — no grand gateway, no queue of tour
Oashi Kogen Onsen The road from Wake climbs for about thirty minutes before the forest thickens and the elevation begins to make itself fe
Okutsu Onsen The Yoshii River runs through a narrow valley in Okayama Prefecture, and along its banks, hot water rises as it apparent
Komori Onsen In the hill country of Kibō Plateau, somewhere between Okayama city and the reservoir formed by the Asahi River dam, the
Awakura Onsen In Nishiawakura, a village folded into the mountains of Okayama, a small hot spring sits beside the Shiotani River.
Yubara Onsen In the valley of the Asahi River, downstream from a dam in Okayama Prefecture, fifteen natural springs push six thousand
Yunose Onsen In the folds of the Kibi Plateau, where the hills of central Okayama gather quietly around a single river valley, there
Yunogo Onsen There is a story, more than twelve hundred years old, about the monk Ennin discovering a white heron healing its wounds

Sandankyo Onsen The bus from Hiroshima takes a little over two hours, winding through the mountains of Aki-Ōta until the gorge announces
Kimita Onsen In the mountain interior of what was once called Bingo Province, Kimita Onsen sits alongside a roadside station in Mitos
Megahira Onsen The Nishi-Chugoku Sanchi Quasi-National Park holds its mountains quietly, and somewhere within them, the waters of Megah
Miyahama Onsen Miyahama Onsen sits along the Seto Inland Sea in Hiroshima Prefecture, close enough to Miyajima that on clear days the i
Kinoe Onsen Ōsakikamishima is the kind of island that asks you to slow down before you have even decided to.
Yusaka Onsen There is a particular kind of place that exists less as a destination than as a threshold.
Yuki Onsen There is a particular kind of quiet that belongs to places just far enough from a city to be overlooked.
Shiohara Onsen At the foot of Kanmuriyama, the second-highest peak in Hiroshima Prefecture, a single inn holds a spring that is said to
Yano Onsen The waters at Yano have been known since the Kennin era, which places their discovery somewhere in the early thirteenth
Tomonoura Onsen The bus from Fukuyama takes about thirty minutes, following roads that gradually narrow as the sea comes into view.

Ichinomata Onsen
Mioka Onsen The Shimada River moves quietly through the middle of Yamaguchi Prefecture, and along its middle reaches, on a sandbar s
Shimonoseki Tsukuno Onsen The name tsukuno comes from the old place-name Tsukuno, and the waters here have a longer history than the current facil
Tawarayama Onsen In the upper reaches of the Kiya River, in a quiet fold of Yamaguchi Prefecture's mountain country, a small cluster of o
Senshunraku Onsen The water here does not arrive warm.
Yoshimi Onsen At the foot of Ryūōzan, in the quiet farmland west of Shimonoseki, there is a spring that has been known here since at l
Okochi Onsen The cold spring was discovered here in 1838, rising quietly from the paddy fields of Toyoura, a fold of inland Yamaguchi
Murozumi Onsen The waters at Murozumi are classified as simple thermal springs — colorless, unassertive, the kind that ask nothing of y
Kusunoki Onsen The Ariho River moves quietly through the farmland north of Ube, and the fields around the old Kusunoki district have a