Kanaguya

The four-storey 1936 wooden fantasy that crowds come to photograph at night — eight baths from four private springs, a nightly building tour, and a lot of stairs

Kanaguya has been an inn since 1758, and its showpiece is Saigetsu-ro, a four-storey wooden building finished in 1936 and, with the grand hall, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property since 2003. People link it to Spirited Away — the inn itself says no official model was ever named — and almost everyone walking past at night stops to take a photo of the lit-up facade. Japanese guests rate it highly: 4.5 across 1,428 reviews on one major booking site and 4.52 across 1,018 on another, with baths the top score. With four private springs there are eight baths, all free-flowing: three large baths, including a rooftop open-air bath, and five private baths that are free and need no booking. You also get a key to Shibu's nine public bathhouses. Guests love the free 40-minute building tour at 17:30, often led by the ninth-generation owner. The downsides are consistent: stairs everywhere and a lift that serves only some floors, sound travelling through the wooden rooms (the inn warns about this itself), private baths often occupied at busy times, and food that some find school-trip-like or served cooling on pre-set trays. In 2025 a guest paid ¥23,100 per person with two meals for one of the historic rooms.