[Access] About 5 minutes by car from Fukagawa-Nishi IC
[Webpage] Moseushi Onsen Peperu (Japanese)

After getting off at the Fukagawa-Nishi interchange, I drove towards the Uryunuma wetland. After a while, the name of the place “Moseushi” and the signboard of an unusual hot spring called “Peperu” caught my attention. So I was thinking about visiting here if there was no other hot spring on my way back from hiking in the Uryunuma wetland. The hiking was really wonderful, but it was bit cold from the rain. So I headed to Peperu to enjoy hot spring.

Peperu seems to be located in the center of the town and it’s also close to the train station. According to the information in the internet, they have a nice restaurant where you can eat some delicious dishes rather cheap. It makes this onsen as a relaxing place for the locals.

There are not only indoor baths, but also an open-air bath with plenty of hot spring water pouring into them, which was very pleasant. The hot spring was a transparent yellowish-brown color, and smelled a little like petroleum. I was a little surprised to see that the hot spring here is drinkable. When I tried it, I could hardly feel the smell of petroleum, but it tasted a bit of saltiness and iron. Compared to the indoor baths, the open-air bath is a little tepid. So the open-air bath is better for me to relax, although the view is not so great.

As mentioned in the description of the changing room, there were hot spring flowers floating in the bath. I envied that there was such a hot spring in the middle of town. It also shows that the strange name “Peperu” comes from the Ainu words for “water” (pe) and “spring” (peru).

The Uryunuma wetland is the reason why I ended up to stop by Peperu in Moseushi Onsen. To get there, I had to drive for a quite long time on a narrow dirt road to the Uryunuma wetland Gate Park, then did some climbing of 3.5 kilometers of hiking. After this struggle, the Uryunuma wetland spread in front of me, which was like a paradise in the sky. Although the weather was bad today, I could see the ponds and alpine plants in the wetland as I walked around the one-way path. Unfortunately, because bears recently appeared, I couldn’t go to the observatory where I would see the whole wetland. However it was still a great place to spend some time.