Kitsuregawa Onsen

Located in the Kitsuregawa district of Sakura City, Kitsuregawa is an old castle town that prospered as an inn on the Oshu Highway during the Edo period. The hot spring has a wide range of effects and benefits, and is known as a good spring rich in sulfur, salt, and iron, attracting many people from within and outside of the prefecture.

Together with Ureshino Onsen and Hinokami Onsen, it is said to be one of the three best hot springs for beautiful skin in Japan, and you can enjoy touring the hot springs for beautiful skin by using a “Onsen Handbill,” which allows you to tour around the hot springs.

Kitsuregawa Onsen was gushed out by boring in 1981, and Kitsuregawa Onsen Bathhouse opened the following year.

Kitsuregawa Onsen is a weakly alkaline spring containing sulfur, salt, and iron that is light brown in color and has a salty taste. The hot springs are beneficial for rheumatic diseases, neuralgia, gastrointestinal diseases, diabetes, infertility, keratosis, pruritus, chronic eczema and lichen planus, and other hot spring indications.

Visitors can enjoy the hot spring even when they stop by the “Roadside Station Kitsuregawa,” the nation’s first “hot spring-equipped” roadside station, which opened in 2001, and the “Municipal Open-air Bath (No. 2 Hot Spring Bathhouse),” a large open-air bath with free-flowing hot spring water that can accommodate 50 people at once in its rock bathtubs.

Since the area was originally a farming village located on a hilly terrain, there are no tourist-oriented inns or entertainment districts.

The quality of the hot springs is said to be one of the best in Japan, and in recent years the three hot springs have been promoted as one of the “Three Best Hot Springs for Beautiful Skin in Japan” together with Ureshino Onsen in Saga Prefecture and Hinoue Onsen in Shimane Prefecture.