Hotels and ryokan chosen for their onsen and sauna · A paid web magazine · Issue 01
171 of Japan's finest onsen hotels and ryokan.
Choosing a Japanese onsen inn from the other side of a screen is hard. Every inn photographs beautifully, every rating looks alike, and what is real you only learn on arrival. We live inside Japan's onsen: hundreds of baths, one-by-one conversations with inns across the country, and no money taken from any inn. This issue gathers only the stays we would tell a friend to book, from Hokkaido to Kyushu.
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Foreword
The finest inns in Japan are those that devote themselves to onsen.
If you are going to travel in Japan, I do not want it to end with simply soaking in an onsen.
Perhaps this is the only time you will visit Japan in your life.
That is exactly why I want you to create, within that trip, a time you will remember even years later.
Japan has countless onsens.
There are hidden hot springs deep in the forest, onsens at small inns in the mountains, and onsens in city bathhouses. Of course, all of them are part of Japan’s onsen culture.
But what we want to introduce in this magazine are the places that make you think, “I want to travel just to visit here.”
As a media outlet specializing in Japanese onsen and saunas, we have researched thousands of onsens and inns across the country.
From among them, we selected even further, repeated actual stays, and gathered in this one volume only the inns that made us think, “People all over the world should know about this place.”
A truly excellent onsen experience is not just about the spring quality being wonderful.
It is also about what kind of land the inn stands on.
When you lower your body into the onsen, what kind of view opens before you?
The sound of the trees swaying? The sound of a river flowing? The call of birds heard from afar?
The scent of the forest or the scent of the sea carried through the steam.
The wind you feel on your skin.
When all of these layers come together in comfort, the onsen becomes more than just “bathing” and turns into a memory.
And truly wonderful inns remain beautiful even after you leave the onsen.
The local cuisine you taste after your body has warmed and your five senses have sharpened.
The vessels the food is served on.
The space where you dine.
The view from your room.
The quiet time that flows through the inn.
The air when you wake in the morning.
When all of these are connected as one, only then does the experience of “I’m glad I stayed here” finally emerge.
What appears in this magazine are not just onsens and saunas, but inns that care about every moment of that time.
As you turn the pages, please imagine:
If I sink into this open-air bath, how would I feel?
If I saw this view with my own eyes.
If I welcomed the morning in this room.
Each time you finish reading one place, there should surely be more places where you think, “I want to go there too.”
And if, after your journey has ended,
“What was the most memorable experience you had in Japan?”
someone asks you,
I would be happy if you remember the time you spent at the inns you discovered in this magazine.
So that you can begin your journey as soon as you find a place you want to visit, we have made it possible to access booking sites directly from these pages and to check locations on Google Maps as well.
This is not a magazine meant only to be looked at.
To learn, to be moved, to decide where to go, and then to book the trip.
We created it so that all of that could be completed within this single volume.
And if, because of this magazine, you visit one of the inns featured here, I hope you will tell us what you felt there.
I hope that journey will become a time that remains in your life for a long while.
Contents
- Noboribetsu Grand Hotel · Hokkaido
- Kitakobushi Shiretoko Hotel & Resort · Hokkaido
- KIKI Shiretoko Natural Resort · Hokkaido
- Premier Hotel-CABIN-Obihiro · Hokkaido
- La Vista Furano Hills · Hokkaido
- Yuyado Daiichi · Hokkaido
- Lakefront Inn Shikotsuko Marukoma Onsen Ryokan · Hokkaido
- Jozankei Yuraku Soan · Hokkaido
- Hakodate Yunokawa Onsen Hotel Banso · Hokkaido
- Century Marina Hakodate · Hokkaido
- Otaru Granbell Hotel · Hokkaido
- Hotel Taisetsu ONSEN&CANYON RESORT · Hokkaido
- Aonobi Yuyu · Hokkaido
- Akanko Yukononi Tsuruga