Kinugawa Onsen Hana no Yado Matsuya

A 1950s riverside inn with river views from almost every room, a rock open-air bath right above the Kinugawa gorge and its own path down to the riverbank — good-value kaiseki, but an ageing building, musty smells and patchy cleaning

Matsuya is a seven-storey, 47-room Japanese inn on the gorge at the quiet north end of Kinugawa Onsen, run by the same company since 1957 (its listed founding date). Nearly every room faces the river, and the hallways are filled with Takehisa Yumeji prints and antique dolls which a 2026 reviewer was told belong to the okami — charming to some guests, 'a little creepy' at night to others. Bloggers who stayed in 2024 and 2025 and dozens of 2026 reviewers agree on the highlights: a rock-built open-air bath with no buildings opposite, just trees and the river below; a garden you can walk down to the water's edge, which they describe as unique in Kinugawa; and a plated kaiseki dinner (not a buffet) with Tochigi pork or beef sukiyaki and rice cooked in a pot at the table, at prices often around ¥20,000 per person. Japanese guests rate it 3.96 across 1,412 reviews on one major site and 3.9 across 943 on another, with the baths the top category on both and cleanliness and facilities the lowest. The recurring complaints are the building: musty or incense-like smells in corridors, dust on air-conditioners, worn shoji and tatami, insects (it sits in a forested gorge), weak Wi-Fi and mobile signal, and a car park some distance away. Opinions on dinner split between 'beautiful and more than enough' and 'small and served cold'. Much of the front-of-house and dining staff are young workers from abroad; most reviewers find them warm, a few find service mechanical. Note that the shared baths are recirculated, filtered and heated.