Akan Yuku no Sato Tsuruga

The Tsuruga group's big flagship on Lake Akan: Ainu art everywhere, three bath complexes with a lake-level garden bath and a rooftop tub, and a huge Hokkaido buffet — but it's a busy, tour-heavy hotel, and 2026 reviews flag worn baths, smells in cheaper rooms and an offsite car park

Yuku no Sato Tsuruga calls itself the starting point of the Tsuruga group, which began at Lake Akan in 1955 and now runs resorts across Hokkaido; its sister inn Hinanoza, in the same onsen town, is the small, quieter option. This is the big one: a main building, the Bekkan 'Miyabi' annex and, since April 2024, the former Akanko Tsuruga Wings, all filled with Ainu carvings and patterns — the Rera rooms even have Ainu folk-craft furniture and bedcovers embroidered by a lakeside artist. Most rooms are tatami or Japanese-Western, and the draw is the bathing: a basement-and-ground-floor complex with seven kinds of bath and a garden open-air bath almost level with the lake, an eighth-floor bath with a rooftop tub and a glass dome sauna, and the Wings baths. Most recent evidence comes from booking-site reviews rather than blogs: Japanese guests rate it 4.6 across 3,892 reviews on one major site (baths and both meals 4.6) and 4.30 across 252 on another, where access scores only 3.47. They praise the lake views, the variety of baths and a buffet of sushi, tempura and Hokkaido seafood that 2022 and 2023 travelogues also loved. The 2026 complaints: the rooftop bath's glass fogged, worn turf and debris in the water, musty smells in Wings corridors, a drain smell and damp pillows, a car park about 600m away, kiosk check-in with no help carrying bags outside the annex, crowds of tour groups, and a longtime guest who found the buffet slipping. Two-meal stays cost 2026 reviewers from about ¥12,000 to over ¥30,000 per person.