Ginzan Onsen Fujiya Inn Snow

Ginzan Onsen Fujiya Inn in Obanazawa, Yamagata prefecture, draws bicarbonate-rich thermal waters in Japan's most photographed Meiji-era onsen townscape — the Ginzan Onsen valley, where wooden three-and-four-story Taishō-era ryokan buildings lean over the Ginzan River illuminated by gas lamps in winter, creating a streetscape so evocative that it inspired Hayao Miyazaki's spirit-world bathhouse in 'Spirited Away' (2001). The Fujiya Inn, one of Ginzan's landmark ryokan, offers bicarbonate thermal bathing in a setting where 19th-century Japanese commercial architecture has been immaculately preserved alongside the thermal tradition that grew from the 14th-century silver mining that gave the valley its name (Ginzan = silver mountain). Winter at Ginzan, when heavy Tohoku snowfall silences the valley and gas lamp reflections glimmer on the snow-covered wooden facades above the steaming river, produces the most romantically atmospheric onsen experience in Japan.