Nyuto Onsen

Nyuto Onsen is not one bath but seven inns scattered through beech forest on the flank of Nyuto mountain above Lake Tazawa, each with its own spring and its own water - between them they draw on around ten sources with different mineral content, so the baths differ in colour, smell and temperature from one inn to the next. Tsurunoyu is the oldest and the one people picture: a thatched wooden building dating in part to the seventeenth century, when a daimyo of the Akita domain came to bathe, with a large mixed outdoor pool of milky white sulphur water over a gravel bed that bubbles up from below. A pass, the yumeguri techo, allows a guest at one inn to bathe at the others, with a shuttle bus between them. Rooms at Tsurunoyu are basic, heated by irori hearths, and book out months ahead.

What you actually see

• Seven inns, ten sources - baths that differ in colour and chemistry from one to the next.
• Tsurunoyu - a thatched seventeenth-century inn with a milky sulphur outdoor pool.
• Gravel-bed springs - water bubbling up through the floor of the bath.
• The bathing pass - a permit and shuttle allowing guests to try all seven.

When to go

All year; winter snow around the outdoor baths is the classic image. Two days.

Honest expectations

Tsurunoyu's main outdoor bath is mixed-sex, which not everyone is comfortable with; women-only hours exist. Rooms book out months ahead and are basic by design. Winter access depends on road clearing. Day bathing hours are short and limited.

Nearby

Lake Tazawa is south; Kakunodate's samurai street is beyond it.