HOTTO YUDA STATION (YUDAMACHI, IWATE PREFECTURE)

Station onsen proving mightier than terminal

Photos by Yomiuri Shimbun Photographer Eishi Miyasaka

By Shoji Ichihara

Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

Surrounded by an old beech forest in the mountains of Iwate Prefecture, JR Hotto Yuda Station has its own onsen hot spring — which is not as strange as it sounds because you cannot dig anywhere in the town without hitting hot water.

There are nine hot springs in the area, including Yumoto Onsen and Yukawa Onsen, and the station is central to all of them.

Right smack in the middle of the station is a giant noren curtain, bearing a giant hiragana "yu" that marks the entrance to the station's hot spring baths.

A charming little sign that says "station entrance" is affixed to the right of the curtain, as if the station lost a battle with the onsen, which makes up about 70 percent of the building.

Regular customers line up to request forms for the first bath of the day even before the onsen opens at 7 a.m.

Mikio Echigoya, 69, has commuted to the station twice a day for the 15 years since the opening of the onsen, which is the first to be built at a train station in the Tohoku region.

Echigoya, who enjoys taking vacations using local train lines, talks to tourists while soaking in the station's hot water to get ideas for his next itinerary.

He also enjoys talking to other regulars, swapping news and local goings-on. "The baths are the best source for news — faster than TV or newspapers," he joked.

The baths gained nationwide attention, and 140,000 people visited them within their first year of operation. But tourism was not the only purpose behind building the station, said former Mayor Nobuo Sugawara, 77.

"This area has one of the heaviest snowfalls in Japan. In addition to being the town's only treasure, the onsen was built to help our citizens live healthier and longer lives," he explained.

Originally, Yudamachi was a mining town. From as early as the Heian era (794-1192), the area had more than 50 mines in which miners would seek gold or silver, among other elements.

But in 1977, the mining town's livelihood disappeared when the Tsuchihata Mine closed, signaling the last of a long line of such closures after World War II.

Masaaki Kotaka, 44, head of the Yukawa Onsen Tourism Association, instigated work on a plan to promote the ruined mine as a tourist destination. "If we change the old mine trolley road between the mine and Hotto Yuda Station into a trail, people could enjoy the scenery as they walk to the onsen," he said. "Thanks to the station, we are now widely recognized, so I hope we can make this an even more appealing destination for tourists. We will definitely make the trail a reality."