Jinata Onsen

photo by User: (WT-shared) Shoestring at wts wikivoyage · CC BY-SA 4.0

It springs at 80 °C from a rock split in two, and the sea cools it according to the tide.

The first thing you do on arrival is check the temperature in a hollow dug in the rock, because the spring comes out at 80 °C and only the sea, mixing in with the tide, makes it fit for bathing. There are no showers and no lights: you go down in a swimsuit, on foot, along a rocky, sloping path of fifteen to twenty minutes from the centre of the island.

地鉈温泉 (Jinata onsen) is an open-air hot spring set in a cleft of lava rock on the coast of Shikinejima, one of the Izu islands. The critic Noguchi Fuyuhito included it as ‘東の張出横綱’ – in sumo, 横綱 (yokozuna) is the highest rank for wrestlers – in his national ranking of open-air hot springs. The water is iron-sulphate.

ℹ️ Free, open 24 hours, with no ticket office. Before getting in, you check the temperature in the test hollow dug in the rock: at high tide the sea can submerge it and cool it, at low tide it can stay too hot. Fifteen to twenty minutes on foot from the centre of the island, on a steep, rocky path (closed shoes, not flip-flops). Swimsuit required; no showers or lighting, to be avoided in the dark.

Sources: shikinejima.tokyo · orion-tour.co.jp

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