Miyahonke Okami Nozawa
- Location
- Nozawa Onsen, Nagano Prefecture, Chubu, Japan
- Water type
- sodium chloride
- Temperature
- 44 °C
- pH
- 7.3
Water profile
Relaxing — deep, immediate muscle release.
Loaded with major ions — the essential minerals (Ca, Mg).
Dense, salty water — you float without effort.
Miyahonke Okami Nozawa is a traditional inn in Nozawa Onsen, a Nagano ski and hot spring village famous for the Dosojin Fire Festival — held every January 15th when village men born in the calendar zodiac years of 25 and 42 defend a monumental pine-wood shrine tower against attackers bearing fire torches in a terrifying pagan ceremony of purification whose origins predate Buddhism's arrival in Japan. The chloride-rich sodium thermal waters of Nozawa Onsen's 13 public 'baths for the common people' (sodeguchi-no-yu) — free to use under the village's ancient communal bathing tradition — flow through Miyahonke's private baths with the same concentrated mineral richness that gives Nozawa its reputation for skin-softening thermal water. The combination of Japan's most thrilling traditional fire festival, world-class powder snow skiing on the Nozawa volcano pistes, and deeply traditional onsen village culture makes Nozawa one of Japan's most complete mountain thermal destinations.