Mikiya

Shiga Naoya's inn, rebuilt in wood in 1927 — some of Kinosaki's warmest service and two free private baths, though winter crab doesn't always live up to the price

Mikiya is the Kinosaki inn where the writer Shiga Naoya stayed, and his favourite room, No. 26, is still kept as it was — you can't sleep in it, but the okami will show you round and tell you about him. The wooden building went up in 1927 after the 1925 earthquake, including a rare three-storey wooden east wing, and was fully renovated in 2013; it is a registered cultural property. Japanese guests adore it: 4.9 across 295 reviews on one major booking site and 4.80 across 248 on another, with cleanliness and service near perfect. Reviewers single out small kindnesses — staff noticing left-handed guests and turning their chopsticks, a ground-floor room found for an elderly parent. Baths are modest by design: two indoor baths that swap between men and women, two free private baths that need no booking, and free passes to all seven of Kinosaki's public bathhouses, two of them a two-minute walk away. The complaints are about food and the old building: 'creative' dishes that don't suit everyone, watery frozen crab served out of season in 2026, cold corridors in winter, rattling sliding doors, and a wooden building where you hear the neighbours — which the inn itself warns about.