Hirayu Onsen — photo: 663highland · CC BY 2.5 · Wikimedia Commons
Onsen in Takayama: is there real hot spring water in the old town?
Search for an onsen in Takayama and you get a list of hotels near the station with a bath on the top floor, mixed in with mountain villages an hour away. Both are real, but they are not the same thing. The short answer: the old town of Takayama has hot spring water from drilled wells, piped to its hotels, and it is not hot at the source. The hot water, some of the hottest in central Japan, is up in the Okuhida valleys to the east and down the railway at Gero. This guide goes through what is where, with the numbers.
The short answer, in numbers
Our records hold 1,538 onsen across Japan, 55 of them in Gifu Prefecture. Ten have an address in Takayama City. That sounds like a lot for one town, but Takayama City is huge: in 2005 it absorbed the surrounding towns and villages and became the largest city in Japan by area, reaching east to the Nagano border. Most of those ten are mountain villages, not part of the town you visit.
The one in the town itself is Hida Takayama Onsen (飛騨高山温泉), recorded as a bicarbonate spring. We have no temperature for it. Japanese travel guides describe it as several drilled sources whose water is piped to about forty hotels and inns, and put the water at around 30 to 35 °C, which means it is heated before it reaches the bath.
Measured in a straight line from Takayama Station, the nearest onsen in our data with coordinates is Nagareha, 18.5 km north in Hida City, a simple spring. The first one recorded at 42 °C or more, roughly the point at which a bath can run without a boiler, is Wariishi, a sulfur spring 25.2 km north. The Okuhida villages start at 26.5 km.
In the town: hotel baths on drilled wells
Many hotels and inns around Takayama Station and the old streets advertise 天然温泉 (tennen onsen), natural hot spring water. That is the Hida Takayama water, and it is legitimate. For a soak after a day of walking the old streets and the morning markets, it may be all you need. But you are bathing in a hotel, not an onsen town: there is no street of public baths, and most of these baths are for guests only. A few hotels also open their baths to day visitors.
If the water matters to you, look for the spring analysis board near the changing room. It says what the water is, its temperature at the source, and whether it is heated, has water added or is recirculated. How to read it is in onsen vs sento and how hot onsen water is.
An hour east: Hirayu and the Okuhida villages
Okuhida (奥飛騨温泉郷) is five villages in the valleys under the Northern Alps, all inside Takayama City and all reached by Nohi Bus from the bus centre next to Takayama Station.
- Hirayu, 27.6 km from the station, is the one to know. Its water is recorded at 90 °C and about 13,000 litres a minute, chloride and bicarbonate, with 26 inns in our records. The bus takes about an hour, and Hirayu is also the terminal for buses on to Kamikochi and over to Matsumoto. Our Hirayu guide has the day baths and the buses.
- Fukuji, Shin-Hirayu and Tochio are smaller villages close to Hirayu, 26.5 to 26.9 km from the station. Our travel data puts them at about 70 to 80 minutes by local bus. Tochio is recorded as a simple spring, Fukuji as simple and bicarbonate, Shin-Hirayu as chloride and bicarbonate.
- Shinhotaka, at the end of the road under the Shinhotaka Ropeway, is the largest, with 52 inns, and the only one of the five with sulfur water on our record, alongside chloride and bicarbonate. It is about 90 minutes by bus.
Hirayu works as a day trip: an hour each way, a bath, lunch, and back to Takayama for the evening. The other villages are better as a night. Several Okuhida inns have large riverside outdoor baths, and some are mixed; see mixed bathing if that matters to you.
Two smaller ones inside Takayama City are closer by bus but cool at the source. Hida-Nyūkawa, about 40 minutes by local bus, is recorded at 33.3 °C and pH 7.3, bicarbonate and sulfur, with one inn. Akigami, about an hour by bus to the south-east, is recorded as bicarbonate, with no temperature on record.
Under an hour south: Gero by train
Gero, 36.8 km south of Takayama in a straight line, is the easiest hot water without a bus. It is on the same JR Takayama Line, under an hour on the Limited Express Hida, and the inns start a few minutes' walk from Gero Station. The source is recorded at 84 °C and pH 9.0, a simple spring: clear, hot and slippery on the skin. The JR Pass covers the train. Many people stop in Gero for a night on the way between Nagoya and Takayama rather than going back for it; our Gero guide has the public baths and the bath pass.
Further: Shirahone, Matsumoto and the Nagano side
Shirahone, the milky sulfur village, is 33.8 km east of Takayama in a straight line, but it is on the Nagano side of the ridge, and without a car it is a long way round, by bus through Hirayu. Our Shirahone guide has the connections. If your route goes on to Matsumoto, a night in Hirayu on the way is the natural break, and our Japanese Alps guide picks the three onsen near Matsumoto.
Not this Takayama: Nagano and Gunma
Some searches for "Takayama onsen" are for somewhere else. There are two villages called Takayama with hot springs of their own, and their water is hotter than the town's.
- Takayama Village, Nagano (高山村), east of Nagano City, has several onsen in our records, among them Yamada (50 to 70 °C, chloride and sulfur), Shichimi (49 to 64 °C) and Matsukawa Keikoku (55 °C). Our travel data has Yamada as a local bus from Suzaka Station on the Nagano Electric Railway.
- Takayama Village, Gunma, in Agatsuma district, has Takayama Onsen, recorded at 64 °C.
If you are booking a bath, check the prefecture: Gifu is the old town with the morning markets, Nagano and Gunma are the villages.
Which one, for the time you have
- An evening in town: your hotel's bath, or a hotel that takes day visitors. Expect the water to be heated.
- Half a day, hot water: Hirayu by Nohi Bus, about an hour each way.
- Hot water without a bus: Gero, by train, under an hour.
- A night in the mountains: Hirayu, Fukuji or Shinhotaka in Okuhida.
- Takayama and Matsumoto on one trip: a night in Hirayu between them.
Things to know before you go
Bus times are rough estimates from our data, not a timetable, and the mountain buses run less often than the trains. Check the current Nohi Bus times before you plan a day trip, especially in winter, and keep an eye on the last bus back to Takayama.
Hotel baths are usually for guests only; ask at the front desk before you assume you can come in for a day bath.
Tattoo rules are set by each bath, not by the town. See going to an onsen with tattoos and check with each place. And the rules are the same in a hotel bath as in a mountain inn: wash first, keep the towel out of the water. Onsen etiquette has the full list.
For the same question in other cities, see onsen in Tokyo, onsen in Kyoto and Osaka and onsen in Nagoya. Coming up from Nagoya? See the three best onsen near Nagoya. Going on to Kanazawa? See the three best onsen near Kanazawa. For a bath without staying the night, see onsen day trips.