Yunokawa Onsen

Most onsen towns ask something of you before they give you the water. You take a shinkansen, then a local train, then a bus, then maybe a short walk up a mountain road. Yunokawa Onsen in Hakodate does not do this. Hakodate Airport is five minutes by taxi from the first hotel on the strip, which makes Yunokawa arguably the most accessible onsen destination in Japan relative to a major airport. You step off the plane in Hokkaido, collect your bag, and you are in the water within the hour.

The springs here are sodium chloride and calcium chloride, neutral at pH 7, emerging at 65 degrees Celsius. The water is clear and carries a pleasant, faint saltiness on the skin, with the density of a mild seawater bath rather than the sharp sting of a sulfurous mountain spring. It warms you from the outside in, and the salt locks the heat into your muscles for a long time after you leave the bath. The large resort hotels along the Matsukura River have both indoor and outdoor facilities, and the better rooms look straight across the river toward the water. In winter, the outdoor baths are extremely hot against the Hokkaido air, and you can sit in the steaming water with snow falling on your face while the hotel lanterns reflect in the dark current below you.

The Matsukura River that runs through the resort area is one of the few places in Japan where Japanese red-crowned cranes, the tall white birds with red caps that are among the most endangered in the world, can be observed close to a city. They winter near the river in small numbers, standing in the shallow water or in the snow beside the bank, and if you are there in January or February and walk the riverside path early in the morning, the birds are sometimes visible from the path. It is an unexpected piece of wildness in the middle of a developed resort area, and the contrast between the crane standing still in the grey water and the steam rising from the hotel bath buildings just behind the treeline is peculiar and beautiful.

Hakodate itself is thirty minutes away by tram, and the city is worth a day of your time. The morning seafood market at the base of the mountain is open from five in the morning and sells sea urchin, crab, and squid fresh off the boats. The night view of the city from the cable car on Hakodate-yama is frequently listed as one of the three best in Japan. Yunokawa works well as a base for all of this. You arrive from the airport, check in before lunch, soak in the afternoon, go into the city in the evening, come back to another bath before bed, and leave the next morning feeling like you actually stopped somewhere rather than passed through.