Jozankei Onsen Nukumori no Yado Furukawa

Jozankei's best-loved big inn: handmade kaiseki, a breakfast buffet people rave about, free drinks in three lounges and staff who make a fuss over birthdays — but only a few rooms have their own onsen, the bathhouse is a walk away, and 2026 brought some upkeep and privacy lapses

Nukumori no Yado Furukawa is a 52–55-room inn (sources differ) in the middle of Jozankei, run by the Furukawa group that also has inns in Otaru and Shiraoi. Its motto is that it has 'nothing glittering', only warmth, and the reviews agree: Japanese guests rate it 4.7 across 4,027 reviews on one major site — breakfast, dinner and service all at 4.8, baths lowest at 4.4 — and 4.63 across 1,411 on another. People come for the food and the fuss. Dinner is a handmade seasonal kaiseki (botan prawns, wagyu hotpot), with sea-bream rice, free souvenir photos and a loaned chanchanko vest for milestone birthdays; breakfast is a big 'country-style' Japanese buffet with a live donburi station and fresh bread. Free drinks flow in the lobby lounge, at a woodland foot-bath lounge and, for the seventh- and eighth-floor 'Tsukihoshi' rooms, in a top-floor lounge with draught craft beer. The baths are in a separate three-storey building, plus Yumemi, a dim basement bath of 100% unaltered spring water that recreates Jozankei's first bath from 1866. Bloggers from 2022 to 2026 loved it. The caveats: only about nine rooms have their own onsen bath, and the two private baths cost ¥2,200; getting to the bathhouse means two lifts and a corridor some call a maze; and the lobby is a flight of stairs below the lifts. 2026 reviewers also report staff twice opening an occupied private bath whose lock didn't work, a mouldy teapot, insects, worn bath fittings, and a dinner some found scaled back. Most recent reviewers paid ¥21,000 to over ¥30,000 per person with two meals.