Motoyu Ryusenkaku

Arima's family ryokan: dinner in your room, its own brown kinsen spring, an indoor pool and 50-plus baby and child services — but the shared baths are heated and recirculated, the family bath isn't onsen, and the house is older and busier than most

Motoyu Ryusenkaku sells itself as 'the inn where even babies can enjoy themselves', and for more than 20 years it has built everything around families with small children: over 50 kinds of child and baby services, a kids' corner with picture books, a baby room with a 24-hour microwave, a heated indoor pool open all year and a small outdoor 'forest pool' in summer. It sits on the hill above Arima with 27 tatami rooms, draws its brown kinsen from its own source about 30 metres away on the grounds, and serves dinner in your room — seasonal kaiseki or Kobe beef shabu-shabu and sukiyaki — with breakfast as a Japanese set in a dining hall. Four family suites opened between 2018 and 2024 have their own kinsen open-air bath. Japanese guests rate it 4.58 across 623 reviews on one major booking site, with service at 4.74; most recent evidence comes from booking-site reviews, plus two first-hand blogs (January 2023 and spring 2025). Reviewers in 2025–2026 praise warm staff who play with children, the in-room dinners, the baby bath chairs, cots in the changing rooms and free laundry. The catches: the shared baths are heated and recirculated with filtration, and the bookable family bath is plain water, not onsen; reaching the outdoor baths and pool means walking outside, with about 30 steps. Standard rooms felt snug once four futons were down (spring 2025), parts of the building are dated (December 2025), two 2026 diners found the dinner miso soup very salty, and in summer 2026 guests arriving early found the doors shut until 15:00. A January 2023 blogger without children found it a poor fit for couples and solo travellers. Two-meal seasonal kaiseki runs about ¥27,800–65,300 per adult in a standard room (November 2026–March 2027).