Tonosawa Ichinoyu Honkan

A wooden inn founded in 1630 and now a registered cultural property, run by Hakone's budget Ichinoyu group: free-flowing baths in some rooms, simmered kinmedai and free drinks at low prices — but no lift, no showers in the shared baths, and many rooms share toilets

Ichinoyu Honkan is where Hakone's Ichinoyu chain began: an inn founded in 1630, now a four-storey wooden sukiya building over the Hayakawa, registered as a national tangible cultural property. It is run on budget lines: you lay your own futon, staff don't come into the room unless asked, and soft drinks and alcohol are free. Japanese guests rate it 4.3 across 1,018 reviews on one major site (dinner 4.6, cleanliness 4.0) and 3.97 across 318 on another, where dinner scores 4.56 but facilities only 3.63. Of its 21 rooms, only some have their own free-flowing spring bath: rock open-air tubs on the ground floor, semi-open 'view baths' upstairs and an indoor bath in the large family room. Many others have no bath or toilet. Dinner, in a Taishō-era hall converted into a fourth-floor restaurant, is the big draw: Yonezawa beef shabu-shabu, a whole simmered kinmedai shared between two or three people, and 70 minutes of free drinks. Bloggers from 2023 to 2026 and several 2026 reviewers say the food beats the price. They also enjoyed the free 1917 Italian-marble family bath and the old custom of washing with spring water scooped from a channel instead of using showers. The downsides come up again and again: no lift and steep stairs, a musty smell and stiff doors (July 2023), cobwebs and dust (June 2026), weak showers, noise from the river and the next room, and small shared baths, one of which a 2022 blogger called awful. Rakuten lists two-meal plans at about ¥13,200–39,700 per person for two sharing.