Ryokan in Nozawa Onsen

All three reviewed inns are in Nozawa Onsen, Nagano, a village of narrow, sloping lanes around the Ōyu public bathhouse and the boiling Ogama springs where villagers cook vegetables, and none of them is easy with limited mobility. Ryokan Sakaya, run by the same family for 18 generations, is the largest: 29 rooms in a six-storey building right next to the Ōyu, a 3-minute walk from the bus terminal, plus seven three-bedroom condominium units with kitchens a short walk away. Sumiyoshiya, founded in 1869, stands beside the Ogama, a couple of minutes' walk from the Yu-road to the ski slopes, and takes only about ten groups a night across a wooden main building and a newer annex. Nozawa Onsen Kawaichiya Ryokan is a mid-sized inn (the official site lists 15 rooms) beside the Kamitera-yu public bath, about four minutes' walk from the Ōyu and the Chūō Terminal bus stop. For the ski season, Sakaya's official site and Sumiyoshiya's English site have taken bookings only for three nights or more.

Ryokan Sakaya (classic) is the pick for bathers who find Nozawa's water too hot: its own simple sulphur spring, about 68°C, rises in the garden, is cooled without adding water and overflows through a bathhouse built by shrine carpenters from a very hot tub into a hot one and then a shallow lie-down tub (roughly 44°C, 42°C and 39°C in July 2024), with a free bookable family bath and Shinshu kaiseki with river-fish sashimi in private dining rooms. Cheaper rooms feel plain or small for the price, the air conditioning struggled on hot days in 2025–26, two meals run about ¥21,000–30,000 per person, and in winter rooms are sold with breakfast only, dinner as an add-on. Sumiyoshiya (classic) suits food lovers: near-perfect review scores for seasonal kaiseki built around shared bowls of local dishes, beef grilled on a hoe and charcoal-grilled iwana, served in private dining rooms or an 1895 storehouse, and stained-glass baths fed by its own springs, cooled by air; but the baths are small and hot, all rooms are upstairs with no lift, and prices have climbed from about ¥22,000 per person in 2023 to over ¥30,000 in 2025–26. Nozawa Onsen Kawaichiya Ryokan (classic) offers two springs under one roof (a small outdoor bath fed free-flowing with Shin-yu, a milky-to-emerald sulphur spring often called Nozawa's finest, an indoor bath from the Ogama source, recirculated and filtered, and Shinano-tei rooms with their own Shin-yu bath) plus a Shinshu and Niigata wagyu steak dinner and near-perfect service scores; the walls are thin, the corridors joining old buildings are hard with limited mobility, and two meals cost about ¥20,000–25,000 per person, over ¥30,000 in a Shin-yu bath room.