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Towada-Hachimantai NP, Akita
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Nyuto’s yam hot-pot was created by Tazawako inn cooks as a local specialty, not inherited from one fixed recipe. Grated, sticky yam is dropped into broth, where it sets into tender dumplings.
Nyuto’s “seven baths” are seven separate inns, each with its own spring, yet the valley has more than 10 sources. Colors and chemistry vary—so the famous milky water is not every bath.
Tsurunoyu has 4 named springs—Shirayu, Kuroyu, Nakanoyu and Takiyu—within just 50 meters. The same small inn grounds offer strikingly different waters.
Ganiba means “crab place”: the name recalls freshwater crabs once common in a nearby stream. Its water is unusually clear for Nyuto, where many baths are cloudy.
Oogama Onsen really is a repurposed schoolhouse: after fire destroyed its inn in 1977, the owners rebuilt it with materials from Koyoshi Elementary in Yurihonjo, then due for replacement.
The peak behind Nyuto has two names. From Akita it resembles a breast, hence Nyuto-yama; from Iwate its outline looks like a courtier’s cap, so locals call it Eboshidake.
A local origin story says hunter Kansuke found an injured crane bathing in a hot spring; the bird’s recovery gave Tsurunoyu its name—“Crane Bath.”
Postwar guests at Tsurunoyu—often local farming or fishing families—stayed 9 nights/10 days and gathered shoots or caught trout to cook. When numbers topped 100, they put on folk-song and shamisen shows.
Tsurunoyu’s history says Akita lord Satake Yoshitaka came in 1638 and Kameda lord Iwaki Genba in 1661; the thatched Honjin was where their guards stayed.
Keeping Tsurunoyu’s Honjin roof alive is a local craft: susuki grass is cut in nearby Obonai, left through one winter, then laid by specialist thatchers from Jindai-Umezawa.
A mountaineering event here during the 1961 National Sports Festival helped turn a long-stay cure retreat into a visitor destination; the national holiday village opened in 1965.
