Tokyo is an extraordinary city. It is also completely relentless.
After three or four days of shrines and department stores and train schedules and menus I cannot fully read, I am always ready to be somewhere quieter. The good news is that Japan makes this very easy. Within two hours of central Tokyo, in almost any direction, there are onsen towns that have been receiving tired visitors for centuries. They are good at this. They have had a lot of practice.
Ryan and I have used Tokyo as a base for onsen excursions more times than I can count now. These are the towns I would tell anyone to consider.
Hakone is the most popular onsen destination from Tokyo, and it deserves that reputation. The journey from Shinjuku takes about an hour and a half on the Romance Car, the private express train that runs directly into the heart of the area. The train ride itself is worth it. You watch the city dissolve into forested hills, then catch your first glimpse of Mount Fuji through the window if the weather cooperates.
The Hakone area is large enough to spend several days in and varied enough to reward exploration. There are more than twenty distinct hot spring villages within the caldera, each with slightly different mineral compositions. Hakone Onsen itself carries a pH of 7.2 and temperatures reaching 82 degrees Celsius at the source. Miyanoshita, which is one of the older resort areas in Hakone, has a slightly alkaline spring at pH 8.4.
What makes Hakone work as a weekend destination is the completeness of the experience. The Open Air Museum is genuinely one of the finest outdoor sculpture parks I have been to anywhere in the world. The Hakone Shrine at the edge of Lake Ashi is beautiful in a quiet way. The ropeway over the volcanic terrain near Owakudani, where you can see the sulfur vents and buy the famous black eggs cooked in the hot spring water, is unlike anything else in the region.
We have come back to Hakone several times. Each visit we choose a different area within the district. There is always something we have not done yet.
Kusatsu Onsen, about three hours from Tokyo by limited express and bus, is for people who want to understand what makes Japanese hot springs genuinely different.
The water here is extraordinary. The Yubatake, or hot spring field at the centre of town, pumps 32,300 litres of water per minute from the earth at temperatures above 90 degrees Celsius. The spring is so hot and so acidic at pH 2.1 that it cannot be diluted with cold water without destroying the mineral properties. Instead, the traditional cooling method is yugaeri, a kind of rhythmic stirring using long wooden paddles, a process that has been performed publicly several times a day for centuries.
This is not a decorative tradition. The water genuinely needs to cool before it can be bathed in. Watching the yugaeri ceremony in the evening, with steam rising off the Yubatake in the cold mountain air, is one of those Japan experiences that stays with you.
For anyone curious about pH and what it means in practice, Kusatsu is the most educational onsen town in the country. The spring is so strongly acidic that you can feel it on your skin within minutes. The antibacterial properties are legendary. Locals say that everything dissolves in Kusatsu water except love, which is the kind of line that sounds better in Japanese but translates well enough.
Stay at least one night. The town empties after the day visitors leave and becomes genuinely peaceful.
Nikko is usually visited for its extraordinary Toshogu Shrine complex, one of the most ornate and historically significant sites in Japan. What many visitors miss is that the surrounding area has excellent hot springs.
Kinugawa Onsen sits along the river of the same name, about 15 minutes from Nikko by local train. The spring water is a simple alkaline type at 52 degrees Celsius, clear and smooth on the skin. The riverside location, with water rushing below and mountains rising on both sides, makes for a rotenburo experience that is hard to beat in this part of Japan.
The combination of Nikko's temples and shrines with an onsen evening nearby makes for a more complete trip than either experience alone. We have done this as a two-day itinerary and it is one of the more satisfying ways to use a long weekend from Tokyo.
Ikaho is built on a steep hillside in Gunma Prefecture, about two and a half hours from Tokyo. The most distinctive feature is the stone staircase street that climbs through the centre of town, lined with shops and inns that have been there for generations.
The spring water here is exceptional for a specific reason. Ikaho is famous for its brown, iron-rich water. The colour comes from high concentrations of iron bicarbonate, which oxidises on contact with air and turns the water a rich amber or dark brown. It looks alarming at first. After the first soak, you understand why people travel specifically for it.
Ikaho at pH around 5 sits on the mild end of the acidic spectrum. The iron content is said to be beneficial for circulation and for conditions like anaemia, and the water does have a distinctive warmth to it that goes deeper than heat alone. My skin always looks better after a stay here, and I attribute a meaningful portion of that to the mineral content.
The Hakone Free Pass and the JR Tokyo Wide Pass cover many of these destinations and make the logistics considerably easier. The Hakone Free Pass in particular covers almost all transport within the area including buses, the ropeway, and the Lake Ashi ferry, which removes the need to figure out individual fares on each leg.
Weekends, particularly three-day holiday weekends, get busy at all of these destinations. Hakone especially fills quickly. Book accommodation at least three weeks in advance for a Friday or Saturday night stay. Midweek visits are noticeably quieter and the onsen experience is better for it.
Autumn, from late October through mid-November, is peak season for the forested areas. Hakone and Nikko are both stunning during koyo, the autumn foliage. They are also at their most crowded. If you want the autumn colours without the crowds, the second week of November on a weekday is usually the best balance.
For a first visit to Japan's onsen culture, Hakone is the right starting point. It is accessible, beautiful, well-organised for international visitors, and the quality of the springs is genuine. Every trip after that can go a little further and a little deeper.
That is roughly how it worked for us.
Ria Flores is an interior designer, Chief Design Officer, and frequent Japan traveller who has soaked in hot springs across Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kyushu, and Kansai. She writes about onsen culture from a traveller's perspective — practical, personal, and grounded in first-hand experience. She is the wife of SpringsAtlas founder Ryan Flores.
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