Hoho, Iwamuro Onsen

A big, lively 50-room inn behind a bonfire-lit gate, renamed Hoho in 2023: Iwamuro's black sulphur water in two free-flowing private baths, a steam stone spa, and free beer, sake and wine with a seafood dinner — but the main baths are recirculated and the dining hall gets crowded

Hoho is the March 2023 renaming of Hotel Ōhashi Yakata-no-Yu, an inn founded in the early Meiji era that sits behind a castle-style gate lit by bonfires in the middle of Iwamuro Onsen, a small spa town near Yahiko Shrine on the Niigata plain. Its 50 rooms — 48 Japanese, two Western — fill three wings around a 1,000-tsubo garden, with the hills of Tahōzan and 'Iwamuro Fuji' behind. Iwamuro's spring, found in 1713, is a sulphur-sodium-calcium chloride water that runs black and stains your soles; here it is at its best in two private baths the inn calls free-flowing. The inn's FAQ says the outdoor bath is recirculated, and a May 2024 onsen blogger read the posted analysis — heated, diluted, filtered, chlorinated — and found the indoor tub was not spring water at all. Japanese guests rate it 4.39 across 1,451 reviews on one major site (baths 4.44, dinner 4.39) and 4.4 across 1,839 on another. Most recent evidence comes from those booking-site reviews; a blogger who stayed room-only at the end of 2022 loved the steam stone spa but found the baths modest and the washing area freezing. In 2026 reviewers praised a seafood-heavy set dinner — abalone grilled alive, nodoguro rice, a big sashimi plate, Niigata beef — with free beer, sake and wine, welcome drinks in the lounge, a breakfast comparing three Niigata rices, large rooms and warm staff. The complaints: a banquet-style hall with queues for rice at peak times, a single 18:00 dinner start, an old building, late-night noise from groups and families, long walks for older guests, hard rice one October morning and an inattentive check-out. There are no allergy substitutions. Two-meal plans ran about ¥16,000–21,000 per person in autumn 2026.