Kin no Yu, Arima Onsen

Arima is a rarity: a hot spring with no volcano beneath it, fed instead by ancient seawater forced up along a deep fault. The contrast between the opaque golden bath here and the clear, carbonated ginsen silver water nearby is the reason to come.

源泉

Kinsen (golden spring)

溶存成分

Iron-rich sodium chloride, strongly saline

湯の性質

Opaque ochre water, one of Japan's most heavily mineralised springs

Arima appears in the eighth-century Nihon Shoki and is traditionally counted among Japan's three oldest hot springs. It was patronised by emperors and, in the sixteenth century, rebuilt under the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, whose tea gatherings here are still commemorated.

Kin no Yu is a simple public bathhouse rather than a resort: bring a towel or buy one at the counter. A free foot bath sits outside the entrance, and the companion Gin no Yu bathhouse is a few minutes away on foot.

公式サイト

Around thirty minutes by Kobe Electric Railway or bus from central Kobe, and roughly an hour from Osaka.