The 12 Best Onsen Towns in Japan

If it's your first trip and you're based in Tokyo, this is the easiest place to start — just over an hour on the Romancecar from Shinjuku and you're there. It has everything: ryokan, baths with several water types, Lake Ashi and the pirate ship, the steaming Owakudani valley, and an open-air museum. Easy as either a day trip or an overnight.

The Japanese often crown Kusatsu the country's "best water" onsen — the acidic-sulfur water is so potent that locals joke it can cure anything but lovesickness. At the heart of town is the Yubatake, a hot-water field steaming away in the centre, plus the traditional "yumomi" show where performers cool the water by stirring it with long wooden paddles.

The onsen town many describe as "stepping into an animation" — three- and four-storey Taisho-era wooden ryokan (around the 1920s) line both sides of the stream running through town. Come nightfall, gas lamps flicker the length of the stone street, and when snow blankets everything in winter it turns into the dreamlike scene so many people picture.

One of Hokkaido's top onsen towns, headlined by Jigokudani — the "hell valley," a red volcanic crater venting sulfur steam across the whole basin, with wooden walkways looping around it. It's famous for offering as many as 9 different water types in a single town, and it's an easy trip from Sapporo or New Chitose Airport.

A village that rolls the two things that go best together in winter into one place — ski by day, soak away the cold in the evening. The real charm is the 13 free public baths (sotoyu), looked after by the residents themselves; you wander the village and dip into one after another as you go.

Gero has been counted among Japan's "three finest onsen" since ancient times. The draw is its slick alkaline water that leaves your skin soft and smooth — earning it the name bihada no yu ("beautiful-skin water"). Stroll along the Hida River and you'll find free foot baths to dip into here and there, in an easy small-town setting.

One of the oldest onsen in Japan, tucked behind the mountains above Kobe. Its signature is two-coloured water — "kinsen," the reddish-brown gold water rich in iron, and "ginsen," the clear silver water from carbonate. Best of all it's close to Kobe, Osaka, and Kyoto, so you can soak on a comfortable half-day trip.

An onsen town where the whole place is a playground for people in yukata — change into one and stroll along the willow-lined canal, dipping into the 7 public bathhouses (soto-yu) one by one. The clack of wooden geta echoes through town, and in winter it's snow-crab season, with plump Matsuba crab to eat your fill of.

This is the real onsen capital of Kyushu, with more hot-spring water than anywhere else in Japan — steam drifts up across the whole city. The headline is the tour of the 8 "Hells" (jigoku), strikingly coloured hot ponds you look at but don't bathe in, plus the hard-to-find-elsewhere experience of a hot sand bath. It's a town with a huge variety of ways to soak.

If Beppu is the loud, all-out onsen, Yufuin — just an hour away — is the calm, arty, chicer side. Its little main street is packed with cafés, galleries, and cute shops, backed by the twin peaks of Mt Yufu, plus Lake Kinrin, where morning mist drifts over the water. It's a firm favourite with couples and the laid-back crowd.

An onsen village in a valley in the Aso area that has deliberately kept out neon signs and modern buildings to preserve its traditional feel. The star is the wooden pass (tegata): a single one lets you wander and pick from up to 3 open-air rotenburo across different ryokan. Fans of rural rotenburo say with one voice that this is the place.

Dogo sits in the city of Matsuyama on Shikoku and claims to be the oldest bathhouse in Japan, with legends stretching back over a thousand years. The stately wooden Dogo Onsen Honkan is said to have inspired the bathhouse scenes in the film Spirited Away, and getting around town on the old streetcar adds to the retro mood.