Exploring Japan's Tiniest Onsen Village

This is Japan's tiniest onsen or hot spring town, and today we're going to explore the entire thing. The main road runs up this way, and right alongside the main road you can see the steam from the vents coming up, and we have the mineral-filled onsen water right here. We should go this way, but we're going to start by turning off to the right and exploring the narrow alleyways that take us up top. Now, it is early in the morning right now. We're looking at about just before 7 a.m., so nothing has opened up yet, and we'll be able to explore this entire town to ourselves, and it's filled with all these little unique back streets, hidden paths, and little pathways to things that you wouldn't expect from a town like this. So, we are out in Wakayama right now, and if you've ever been out to Wakayama, you'll know that it's quite a drive. It's a challenge to get out here, but it's definitely worth it. There's plenty of public access to this as well, and already, even just turning around to take a look behind us, there's something about these narrow alleyways and stairs that I've always, always enjoyed. Now, this is called Yunomine Onsen. Onsen! That's how you can tell it's early in the morning. The words are not coming out. Yunomine Onsen. This is Yunomine Onsen, and even off the side like this, get the little bird on the roof up there, but we also get hiking paths that go into the mountain out here. Now, this little town is filled with two things, primarily. Number one, onsen, or hot springs, and number two is little lodgings and places to stay. Now, this is actually one of Japan's oldest established hot spring towns that's nearly 2,000 years old, which is incredible. I think it's 1,800 years old. Look at this stairway right here. Let's just take a peek right here. This. Oh, that is just gorgeous. I love it, and this is actually along the Kumano Kodo kind of pilgrimage trail here in Wakayama. If you don't know what that is, there are several pilgrimage or walking trails in Japan. One of them is the Naka Sendo, and then you get the Kumano Kodo as well, and so this is all really, but it just goes back so so many years. I want to take another quick peek over here, but it's also part of the UNESCO world heritage, and so the this particular area is very, very sulfur rich, and you can smell it as soon as you arrive here as well. Look at the back side of all the baths and whatnot here. As soon as you step into the area, you can smell the sulfur. It just fills the air, but there's also a couple extra things here that are very, very interesting. First off, there's a UNESCO world heritage bath here called Tsuboyu that I will show you the entrance to in just a moment, but there's also one of the things that I found really interesting about this place is they also consume the onsen water here, which is kind of rare. It's not super, super common, but again, look at this scene here. So you get a ton of hotels, lodgings, kind of local B&B style things, and you get a ton of onsen or hot springs. There are buses that run through the town, and so I came in here last night to try out the UNESCO world heritage bath, and it was interesting for sure. Such a treat. One of the more interesting baths that I've had a chance to take in Japan, and this is the main onsen or bath for the area, Yunomine Onsen. Now, got really lucky to get in here yesterday because I was going to come here today, but it turns out that today everything is closed, which is kind of a bummer, but to look at the pricing on things here. So you've got the normal bath, you're looking at about 400 yen per person, or you can buy a 12 time ticket. They're also really well known for this kusuryu, this kind of medicinal bath, which is 200 yen more expensive. It's 600 yen or about 4 USD, and then there's the kazakoyu private bath, and then this one here, the tsuboyu, and the tsuboyu is the only world heritage site that you can bathe in, and if you take this bath, you get access to either the normal or the kusuryu as well, and you just grab it all from this ticket machine. And this here actually kind of grabbed my eyes, this onsen kumitori. You see, when I took a look at this, I was wondering, well, what is this for? And you can actually approach the staff and take onsen water with you. Now, it says that this onsen water can be consumed. However, in one day, please do not consume more than 180 milliliters. So you can drink the onsen water, and what's more is this little shop right here, you can grab eggs, fresh eggs, and then you can bring those fresh eggs down into this area right here, and you see that little pool right there? We zoom into it. This little pool right here, you can cook your eggs. You just drop your bag of eggs right into the onsen water right there, and away you go. You leave them there for however many minutes, they cook, and then you have onsen eggs. You have a shrine right here, and then if we come back this way to explore more of the hidden pathways, you can see all the steam coming up here. The private UNESCO World Heritage Bath is right around the corner, and it was quite the experience. I don't know how to describe it. It's a bath, but it's also very tiny. You get a ticket, and then you sit on a bench that's up here, and you wait, usually for anywhere between 30 to 90 minutes, and then you go into a little hut which just has this tiny little bath and a bunch of rock built around it. This is the area that you'd wait right here, and then this is where you would take the the bath from. You'd come down here. It's chained off right now, so we're not gonna go in, but we will go across this little bridge here because this is the bath area right here, and to give you an idea of what it looks like inside, this is what it looked like inside last night. Now, right behind this bath, if you walk up this pathway just a little bit, you'll notice that there is a sign right here for the Kumano Kobo. That is the pilgrimage trail, and it runs up back this way. We're going to continue on down the town this way. Now, because there are a lot of kind of attractions, tourist attractions, in this area, for example, from here if you wanted to, you could walk to the Kumano Hongu Taisha, which is the biggest torii gate, and in a previous Tokyo Lens Explorer walk, we actually went and explored the entire shrine and a little bit of the Kumano Kodo behind that as well if you want to see what that's like, but because of that, this area has fantastic public transportation access, and even right now you can see a bus coming up the road, and so last night when I came here, I saw maybe two or three Japanese people, and the vast majority of others were visitors from all over the place, and oh, I like this. I'm always amazed at how they will build the tiniest structure just wedged right in like this, and then you get more information about this particular route of the Kumano Kodo. You get this right here. I want to take a quick peek back here because access to a lot of the places in the area is done through these tiny narrow back streets like this. Oh, okay, and this continues on up this way and just kind of gives you a back view of the town from up here as well. And that seems to actually continue up into the mountains as well, and we're not gonna go. This is one of the things I really really love about coming out and exploring Wakayama is there's a non-stop flow of these tiny hidden, oh I gotta make sure I don't slip down these rocks, they are slippery, narrow alleyways that lead into mountain paths that you can hike through and explore, and I love the view that we're getting here. Okay, so we'll come back down around here and continue exploring the tiny town. We're actually almost at the far end of the town with... had Norm slipped. We're okay though. So, the main road continues up this way. We came from down this way and this way here leads up the hill and splits off into a couple directions. So, we might take this path twice because I didn't have a chance to check it out yesterday, but one of the pathways that breaks off the side is actually quite interesting. We've got a guest house right here, seemingly another one right here, and then this Jay Hopper's place. This is the route that I didn't get to take yesterday and I went to a local place for food and they're like, oh did you take the walk up the Jay Hopper's stairs? And I was like, no. And they're like, oh you got to do that. So, we're gonna have to loop back and find out what's so special about this walk. And it looks like a lot of the guest houses in the area have tie-ups with some of the local businesses to give discounts and stuff like that. So, it's very well established. Again, we're looking at a nearly 2,000 year old onsen town here in the mountains of Japan. So, also that private use bath is only 30 minutes at a time. So, oh boy, there's lots of ryokan in the area as well. And then this here, again, just one more time. So, we've got this stairway right here which clearly just leads up into the mountains. And there are so many of these little stairways that just lead up into a mountain path. We've got a view of this side. There's all the water tanks as well because even a lot of the private ryokan will have their own baths. But if we come out to this parking area to get kind of a view from this angle, I'm actually surprised right here because for as densely packed as all of that is, there's just this giant open space that nothing has been built into. The other thing is there's not that many bridges across. So, if we come and we zip down this way, I found this and find myself wondering what this was. Shuttered up and overgrown. Was it just for storage? Was it run as a business at one point? The side of it on this end, I don't know if you can tell, has actually kind of started to collapse in. But if we zip down this way and loop around. Yes, I'm running a little bit. This right here, this is the opposite end of the onsen town. I guess village? Village might be more appropriate. And I want to loop back and take that secret pathway that we didn't get to take yesterday. And right here, Rotenburo. So, this here is an outdoor bath. And this here is another. Again, the whole place is just either places you can stay or places you can bathe. Or in this case, kind of a combination of the two. This is Minshuku Ryu no Taniso. It's kind of hard to read from this distance, but we pulled it off. And then, looks like there's a few private homes here as well. But living out here, like deep in the mountains of Wakayama, can come with its own challenges. There are not really from this area. You don't have quick or easy access to anything like convenience stores or any of those things that most people are like, oh yeah, Japan makes it really easy. And in the winter months, some of the roads around here will get completely closed off due to bad weather. I just, I really like the homes here as well. Like, look at this. Look how tiny that home is. And it's two floors. A one, two. They just have their car parked there. Oh, I love it. I love it so much. And imagine having your own private bridge like this. And just, that's my parking lot for today. I'm just gonna park my car on it. And you've got a river passing by in front of your house like this. But I'm increasingly curious about this route that will take us through the the back side, the Jayhopper side. And so, we've got to go explore that because it seemed like I had made some grave error by not going up the Jayhopper's pathway. And then I, oh, you're really missing out. And they wouldn't tell me why, which was, all it did is pique my curiosity. And Norm's a sucker for finding out that there's a hidden route in a town that he didn't get to go to. And so, considering that most of these places that I've been just feel like one giant Zelda video game, here we go. We're gonna take this route and see where it leads us. So far, not disappointed. The stair height is quite uneven. I would rank it a solid 6.3 out of 10. Okay, the pathway definitely shows promise so far. This seems to be the main B&B or hostel here. And for a moment, I lost my English. Also, take a look through here. Up this way, it continues around the back. Okay, I thought it was just gonna dump us out into the road or something, but what's up here? Okay, I see. I get it now. I instantly get it now. Ah, interesting. Okay, so remember how I said there are hidden little pathways tucked behind every little area? Well, sure enough, this particular pathway here is one for the Kumo no Kodo. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Oh, wow. Oh, and the moss is spectacular. I wonder if we can see it from this side. Oh, I gotta show you this. So, we can come along this side, which is really narrow and does not feel safe to be up here at all. Like, just walking on this tiny little edge. Okay, that leads us back down. So, let's poke our head into this section of forest for just a second. And there we go. And the Kumano Hongu Taisha is just about three kilometers this way. So, if you wanted to go see that giant torii gate, you could literally just hike through here. What a beautiful hike that would be. Imagine starting your day here at like 4, 5 in the morning and just hiking through this. And you can do that, especially in the Japanese summer. I would actually almost recommend doing that in the Japanese summer because it gets so hot, but the sun also comes up incredibly early. Like, it starts getting bright outside at around 4 o'clock in the morning. Like, if you haven't caught any of the 4 a.m. adventures that we've done, then that might surprise you, but it gets bright from like 4, 4 30 in the morning. So, you can do these hikes really early before the intense summer heat hits. And then, ah, okay, I see. And the Kumano Kodo trail kind of continues here. And so, the Yudomine Onsen, which is where we just came from, and then Yudomine Oji. All right. I really, really didn't discover this place yesterday. I was missing out, mind you. I came in and I just kind of wanted to get a feel for the area. Oh, well, thank you. See, this is why you talk to locals. This is why you talk to locals and find out about the little hidden trails and everything, because we get moments like this. I really... And each and every one of these, since we're in like a World Heritage-backed area, comes with these plaques that kind of tell you about the area. Like, if you want to pause or screenshot that and read that later, you can. But, look at this. We'll make our way up over to the shrine itself. Every inch of my face is covered in spider webs. Last night, the service area that I stayed at was probably the single most bug-rich area I've been to in my entire life. I went to get a bottle of water from the vending machine, and in order to put my coin in, I literally had to clear off the coin receptacle of bugs, because my coins wouldn't be able to go in. It was that many. And then, when my change came out, I almost completely gave up on it, because I had to put my hand through just a very thick layer of bugs just to get in and grab the coins. And I think that stuck with me, because I had a really weird dream last night that I had looked down in my pocket, and there was a giant Japanese poisonous centipede or millipede, whatever the black one with the red on it is, just sticking out of my pocket. And those things are poisonous and dangerous. And I woke up, and then I was awake, and it was way earlier than I wanted to be awake. And coming into this area, the camper van that I'm driving ended up getting completely spattered with bugs. The whole front of it is just bugs. On the new Tokyo Lens Minis channel, I'm gonna be putting together like a video of everywhere that we've gone. This entire trip is going to get put into one video that we can check out, and then that'll link you to all the Tokyo Lens Explorer adventures that we did along the way. And there's an entire scene in there about just the bugs spattering the front. I'm just trying not to fall. I'm using this bug talk as my own mental focus to try not to fall, as this is so slippery. And I didn't intend on doing forest walks. I believe this takes us actually back down to the onsen. That's where I'm going. Yeah, it said 0.1 kilometers, so it should be right down here. So many spider webs though. Okay. All right. Just trying not to fall. That's it. So if you want to see this all as like one giant adventure, then definitely that one, if it hasn't come out already, will be coming out very soon. And I will link the channel so you can check it out as well. We've got a little bit of a waterfall here, and I'm just trying not to fall in. I like it. Waterfalls at 7 a.m. Okay. Waterfalls and me trying not to fall into the river from a high place. If you've seen any of our previous adventures, and I'm guessing you have, you'll know that I have a bit of a tendency to slip in the wetter areas. I typically will bring my proper hiking boots, but I didn't intend on ending up in this forest this time. And so that does bring us right back into the town like this. I had no intention whatsoever of doing any forest hiking on this one. I just wanted to hit a few hidden or unknown or kind of difficult to access spots, and it just turns out that in Wakayama, all of them lead to hidden little hiking paths. Come down this way. We'll cross our little bridge once more. It's really unfortunate that the baths and everything are closed today. I thought it would be a really nice experience for us to either grab one of the eggs and cook it in the thing or just kind of show around the baths a little bit. But the one, it's literally this one day just so they can do a full cleaning of everything, so they've shut it all down. And it's a little unlucky, but it is. See again. Again. Always with the little pathways that go up behind stuff. It never ends. There's an absolute ton of them. And one thing that I've always liked about the onsen towns is the steam coming out of everything. The water was very, very hot. And this is the egg boiling box. I don't know. I didn't know what to call it. I felt like receptacle was the wrong word. That is where you boil the eggs. Seems like the range of places to stay here as well goes from like guest house all the way up to really nice place. These here are the bus stops for the area. Then as you can tell the bus stop, the buses don't come super, super often. And so if you're coming here and you don't have a car and overnight thing would not be a terrible idea. And honestly, it seems like they've got some great local drinks and sake and beer and everything. So I would almost recommend just staying overnight. That's the stairway that we were on before. Then almost every day of this adventure so far has been forecasted for rain. And then ended up with beautiful skies like this. So we got really, really lucky on this. And I don't know why this little stair bridge right here is something that I'm enjoying immensely. I really like it. You know, when you stop and think that over time people built each and every one of not just the houses and the structures here, but the bases that all of this needed to go on was all built and interconnected. And it's just the effect of the effort that has gone into building the places that we live and enjoy on earth. And it feels like a real treat to be here. This gentleman here works at the onsen down there and him and I had a good chat yesterday. He taught me a ton about the area and I didn't expect to get to see him today since the onsen is closed. But I guess he's pitching in for cleaning and getting to see him at the end of this feels like the cherry on top. You can literally hear the smile in my voice. But that was the entire town. Japan's tiniest onsen or hot spring town. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Please leave me something down below. Thank you so much for joining this adventure. And you know, I will see you again real soon.