Zaō Onsen

A hot spring area on Mount Zaō in the north of Honshū, in a stratovolcanic range that straddles Yamagata and Miyagi Prefectures. Records of the spring go back as far as 110 AD: a wounded warrior is said to have drawn an arrow out of his body and cleaned the wound here, and found that it healed remarkably well. Locally the water is still called the Springs of Beauty. It is high in acid and sulfur, with the smell of rotten eggs, and runs at 45 °C in the open-air public bathhouse. By January the conifers above are encrusted by hard rime into the formations called juhyo, or snow monsters.