Yamamizuki

Riverside open-air baths and some of Kurokawa's warmest service, a shuttle ride from the village — excellent value, if you book a room with its own bath

Yamamizuki is a 21-room inn beside a mountain stream about 2 km outside the centre of Kurokawa Onsen, and Japanese guests rate it very highly: 4.64 out of 5 across 482 reviews on one major booking site and 4.5 on a specialist onsen site, where service scores a perfect 5.0. The draw is bathing next to running water. The inn calls the men's open-air bath, Yūkoku-no-yu, its symbol, where you hear the river and watch the trees move; women have their own open-air bath, Mori-no-yu, reached by a path through riverside woods. Bloggers describe hot water — around 45°C outdoors — thick with mineral flakes, and a spring the inn calls gentle on the skin. The service is what turns guests into fans: luggage goes ahead to the inn while you are dropped in the village to explore, staff greet guests even outside the property, and one blogger with decades of onsen trips called it their favourite. Two 2022 bloggers paid about ¥40,000 for two with dinner and breakfast and wondered how the inn could charge so little. Criticism is mild but consistent: meals can arrive slowly, dinner has occasionally been served cooler than it should be, one guest found stains on the tatami, and older reviews found the cooking refined rather than hearty.