Although many hotels and Japanese-style inns utilize hot spring water, this bathing utilization has been excluded in past reports and was only estimated by the authors (Freeston and Lund) for WGC2005, mainly as it is difficult to evaluate the actual use. However, to be consistent with reports from other countries and the world-wide summary, the numbers for bathing and swimming are included in this report.

The total capacity without bathing has not changed much from WGC2005. Bathing now accounts for about 90% of the utilization in the country for direct-use. Since 2002, 141 new direct-use facilities has been added to the database, while 136 facilities were removed of which 58 facilities were dismantled or stopped operating due to economic problems, switching to oil or corrosion/scaling problems.

The various applications are as follows:

77.37 MWt and 969.49 TJ/yr for space heating;
36.92 MWt and 451.73TJ/yr for greenhouse heating;
7.91 MWt and 141.86 TJ/yr for fish farming,
1.24 MWt and 30.92 TJ/yr for industrial applications;
152.54 MWt and 516.27 TJ/yr for air conditioning and snow melting (assuming a 30% - 70% split as for WGC2005);
1,810.19 MWt and 23,519.81 TJ/yr for bathing and swimming;
13.36 MWt and 67.86 TJ/yr for geothermal heat pumps.

The total is 2,099.53 MWt and 25,697.94 TJ/yr