Hoshitouge Thatched Onsen
- Location
- Tsunan, Niigata, Chubu Region, Japan
- Water type
- sodium chloride
- Temperature
- 38 °C
- pH
- 7.3
Water profile
Soothing — neither hot nor cold, perfect balance.
Loaded with major ions — the essential minerals (Ca, Mg).
Dense, salty water — you float without effort.
Hoshitouge Thatched Onsen in Tsunan, Niigata is one of Japan's most photographically celebrated open-air baths, where a rotenburo of chloride-rich volcanic water fills a beautifully constructed thatched-roof wooden pavilion open to panoramic views of traditional rice terraces and the Naka-Echigo mountain landscape in a setting of great Japanese rural architectural beauty. The onsen was designed in conscious homage to the forms of traditional Japanese rural architecture, creating an aesthetic experience of deliberately cultivated antiquity that feels simultaneously ancient and perfectly composed in the satoyama agricultural landscape. Tsunan receives meters of heavy wet snowfall each winter, and bathing in the warm chloride water beneath the thatched roof while silent heavy snow falls around the open wooden structure is considered one of Japan's most transcendent seasonal onsen experiences.