Echigo-Yuzawa越後湯沢

Especially popular for outdoor sports like skiing and hiking. A hot spring resort surrounded by mountains.

Echigo-Yuzawa is located in the southernmost part of Niigata and adjoins Nagano and Gunma. This is a historic hot spring resort, which appears in the well-known novel "The Snow Country" written by the Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata. Echigo-Yuzawa also has good transportation service, particularly from the metropolitan area, so that it attracts a lot of people for skiing in winter and for hiking and camping in summer.

At the Echigo Sake (rice wine) Museum inside Echigo-Yuzawa Station, you can enjoy bathing in the sake spa. And around the station you will find museums such as the Shiro Shirahata Photo Museum, which has around 170 landscapes of world-famous mountains, and the Yuzawa Folklore History Museum.

By taking the Yuzawa-onsen ropeway from Sanroku Station (at the foot of the mountain), you can go up to 1,000 meters above sea level. Around the Sancho Station (at the top of the mountain), there is Alps-no-sato, the alpine plants garden, where you can enjoy 'mizubasho' (skunk cabbages) in the spring, 'nikkokisuge' (a kind of yellow lily) in summer, and the autumn leaves of Japanese larch trees in fall. Also, Echigo-Yuzawa is covered in snow in winter and attracts many skiers.