Sekiyama Onsen

Sekiyama Onsen occupies a mountain community in the Myoko area where the Sekikawa River descends from the volcanic Myoko highlands through a valley of deep summer greenery and prodigious winter snowfall, serving a community that has maintained the character of a traditional Japanese mountain village through the pressures of rural depopulation by developing its combination of natural hot springs and access to Myoko Kogen skiing as sustainable assets. The volcanic geology of the Myoko range, whose peaks form part of the boundary between Niigata and Nagano prefectures, generates geothermal resources that feed multiple distinct hot spring sources across the highland area, each with slightly different mineral compositions reflecting the varied volcanic geology through which the springs ascend. The onsen's siliceous mineral waters, emerging from the volcanic substrate of one of Japan's most volcanically dynamic highland zones, provide restorative thermal bathing in a mountain community where the natural thermal wealth of the earth has sustained human settlement through the long winters of Japan's most challenging snow-country environment.