Tickets will be required to enter Ginzan Onsen at its most beautiful time of day and year.

Ginzan Onsen, located in the mountains of Yamagata Prefecture, is one of Japan’s most beautiful hot spring neighborhoods. It’s especially breathtaking in the winter months, when the rows of classically styled ryokan (Japanese inns) are blanketed in snow, and even more so after sundown, when the pathways around the river are bathed in the soft glow of gas streetlamps.

Ginzan Onsen is also one of Japan’s more expensive hot spring towns, but with much of its beauty being on public streets, you don’t have to be spending the night in one of its hotels to take in its breathtaking views…or at least you didn’t have to. The situation has recently gotten more complex, as the Ginzan Hot Spring Association has announced that it will be instituting a limit on the number of daytime day trip visitors allowed into the neighborhood, and the system doesn’t allow for any at all after a certain time.

The decision comes after several years of discussion on how to handle increasingly large day trip (i.e. non-overnight) sightseeing crowds. Particularly during peak tourism times, there have been instances of verbal altercations between visitors jockeying for the best positions to take photographs from, pedestrians ignoring traffic safety rules, and conditions on roads that are congested enough to prevent ambulances from getting swiftly in and out of the area when emergency medical services are needed.

Under the new system, day trip visitors are asked to take a paid shuttle bus to Ginzan Onsen from the Taisho Romankan visitor center, located further down the mountain from the hot spring area (which is a pedestrian-only area). Between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., there will be no limit on the number of permissible day trippers, but in the evening, from 5 to 8 p.m., a maximum of 100 day trippers per hour will be allowed to enter Ginzan Onsen, and they’ll be required to have “tickets” (i.e. reservations) for the privilege. The shuttle bus will cost 1,150 yen (US$7.65) per person.

After 8 p.m., only business-related/official vehicles will be allowed in or out of Ginzan Onsen, meaning that between 8 at night and 9 the next morning, Ginzan Onsen will essentially be restricted to hotel/restaurant guests, staff, and local residents.

The “tickets required between 5 and 8 p.m.” rule isn’t something you can get around by showing up earlier in the day, either, as day trippers without a “ticket” are asked to leave Ginzan Onsen by 5 p.m. In addition, while tickets to enter Ginzan Onsen can be reserved online, you can’t make any sort of advance reservation for the required shuttle bus ride, so you’ll want to avoid showing up too close to the end of the until-8 p.m. visitation window, in case the soonest departing bus is full and you have to wait for the next one after that.

The regulation go into effect on December 23 and are scheduled to be in place until the end of March. Reservations for evening tickets for December and January can already be made online here, while reservations for tickets to be used in February and March will become available from January 6.

Source: Ginzan Onsen official website via IT Media
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: Pakutaso, Ginzan Onsen official website
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