Chugu Onsen Yakushi-no-Yu

Yakushi-no-Yu is a rustic open-air hot spring set at roughly 700 meters above sea level in Hakusan City, Ishikawa Prefecture, just below the Chugu tollgate that marks the Ishikawa-side entrance to the Hakusan-Shirakawago White Road. Chugu Onsen itself claims some 1,200 years of history: local tradition holds that Taicho Daishi, the monk who opened Mount Hakusan to pilgrims, found the spring after watching an injured white dove bathe in it, and the first bathhouse is said to date from 1574. The present bath was built in August 2017 by the Chugu Onsen innkeepers' cooperative and takes its name from the Yakushi Nyorai enshrined in the village's Yakushi hall.

The water is a sodium chloride and bicarbonate spring, hypotonic, neutral and hot. It emerges at 61 degrees Celsius with a pH of 6.8, flowing naturally at about 130 liters per minute. Clear at the source, it takes on a yellowish-brown tint as it oxidizes in the air, and it has a distinctly silky feel on the skin. Chugu has long been known as a drinking cure for digestive complaints. The tub runs on undiluted, unheated, non-recirculated spring water.

Facilities amount to separate men's and women's open-air tubs and a plain changing room. There are no showers, no taps and no amenities of any kind. Nobody staffs the site: bathers drop the 500 yen fee into an honesty box at the changing room entrance. From the small free car park it is a walk of about 160 meters along a footpath. Nearby are two free foot baths, Yakushi-no-Yu and Saru-no-Jodo-no-Yu, plus a heated stone floor where visitors can warm up fully clothed. Deep snow closes the site from roughly December to April.