Sendatsu Onsen Kaminoyama
- Location
- Kaminoyama, Yamagata Prefecture, Japan
- Water type
- sodium chloride
- Temperature
- 41 °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.
Sendatsu Onsen Kaminoyama, in the historic spa town of Kaminoyama in Yamagata Prefecture, draws on chloride thermal waters that have been heating the city's baths for over 550 years — one of the longest continuous thermal bathing traditions in Tohoku, with the discovery of the spring traditionally attributed to a travelling Buddhist monk in 1458. The saline chloride waters, prized for their warming and skin-nourishing properties in the classic Japanese onsen tradition, flow through a town that also preserves a small feudal castle and the samurai residence quarter (buke-yashiki) of the former Kaminoyama domain, making it one of the few Japanese onsen towns where thermal bathing and samurai heritage coexist in a single historic streetscape. Kaminoyama's position in the Mogami river valley at the foot of the Zao volcanic massif, Japan's most famous winter ski-and-onsen destination, makes it a natural complement to the better-known Zao Onsen for visitors exploring the thermal landscape of Yamagata.