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These Are Japan’s Best Onsen Areas For A Winter Getaway

Unseen Japan
4 min readJan 27, 2025

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Looking for a hot soak this winter in Japan? A new ranking finds the top onsen (hot springs) you should visit to stay warm.

Picture: ぺっぱー / PIXTA(ピクスタ)

Looking for a hot soak during the winter months while in Japan? The country’s onsen (hot springs) are an excellent way to relax and restore your health by heating yourself down to your bones. However, with over 3,000 onsen towns and 27,000 hot springs, it can be tough to determine the best place to go.

We’ve provided recommendations before on some of the nation’s best onsen, as well as some hidden gems around Japan. Now, the folks at JR Pass have used their own ranking system to come up with the best onsen to visit during the cold months.

JR Pass took 50 of the top-ranking onsen from Japan Guide and distilled them down further, using four criteria:

  • Average admission price for onsen in the area
  • The number of bath houses available
  • The overall review score from Japan Guide
  • Accessibility — a combination of public transport availability, transport times, and transport cost to rank the onsen you can most easily reach without private transportation

The company found the following onsen came out on top:

Hakone Hot Springs

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Unseen Japan
Unseen Japan

Written by Unseen Japan

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