Yumoto Onsen In December 2017

We visited Nikko in December 2017 and stayed for two nights at Yumoto Onsen.

It's an onsen resort located in the center area of Nikko National Park and near the Lake Yunoko. Yumoto onsen is an onsen resort on the plateau area surrounded by the wetlands registered under the Ramsar Convention and that's where we spent two nights while we visited Nikko last year.

I guess it was a tad troublesome to travel all the way to Yumoto Onsen unless one wants to mountain climb in summer or ski in winter or enjoy the autumn magnificence, because when we were there the place was pretty quiet. But during peak season, this place definitely would be bustling!

We booked our room at Ohruri in Yumoto Onsen and when we were there, only about 10 rooms were occupied which was pretty fine for us!

The hotel behind ours had a full house though, filled with Japanese school kids on a trip.

While the onsen resort is quite small there were some nice attractions available.

The place is rather quiet and before we arrived, I had thought of the possibility of going for a run there but seeing how small the area is and I wasn't too keen on running along the main road (no matter how quiet it was!) and also the fact that it snowed in the morning, I ditched that idea and enjoy more time sleeping on my futon. 

The ones that we visited, after our hike along Lake Yunoko and Lake Chuzenji was its outdoor footbath and the Yunodaira Marsh where we could see for ourselves the source of most of the town's hot water bubbles up from the ground.

The water was quite hot for me and it took me awhile to fully dip my calves in the water. There was a couple enjoying the free footbath when we arrived and after they left, we had the place for ourselves for a few minutes before we were joined by another couple.

Before dipping our tired legs in the foothbath, we did check out the Yunodaira Marsh which is located nearby.

Huts for each properties' hot spring source. Pretty interesting to look at.

The source hot spring is originally emerald green color, but the color turns to milk white, when the hot spring is exposed to air.

Talking about hot water, we enjoyed the onsen available at our hotel A LOT! We pretty much get the place to ourselves except for a few occasion so we managed to sneak in a few photos of the indoor and outdoor onsen when there were nobody around.

All ready for an onsen soak!

The ladies changing room. It had an array of stuff for ladies, an even the horse cream from Hokkaido that Twilight Man had blogged about a few years ago.

Everything that I need were available - lotion, sunscreen, hair tonic, moisturizer, face wash, BB cream, etc. Banyak syiok woh.

The men changing room, I was told had only a few creams available. Kesian. Hihi

The indoor bath area.

And the outdoor bath area.

Enjoying a soak in the outdoor onsen is especially nice.

After a soak, enjoying a bottle/pack of cold milk is nice too.

Next up - our stay in Kinugawa Onsen.