Awanoyu
白骨温泉 泡の湯
Awanoyu in its valley, Shirahone Onsen · YOSHIFUMI OGISO / CC BY-SA 3.0
A huge milky-blue mixed bath you can soak in for an hour — lukewarm by design, with bathing wraps for women — at a century-old mountain inn that's no longer for families
Awanoyu has been in Shirahone since 1912, and nearly everyone comes for one thing: a 70-tsubo outdoor bath of milky, sulphurous water at body temperature (the spring emerges at 37°C), which is why guests happily stay in for an hour or more. It's mixed, but designed to be approachable: separate entrances, a women's changing room with steps straight into the opaque water, and a thick towel-style wrap lent free to overnight guests. Japanese reviewers rate it highly — 4.7 across 834 reviews on one site and 4.64 across 1,249 on another — with the bath and the attentive staff scoring highest. Indoors, a cypress bathhouse has a 37°C tub and a hotter one. Dinner is a 14-dish Shinano course with a Japanese black beef or pork main, and breakfast brings onsen-kayu, rice porridge simmered in spring water. The downsides are the ageing building and its comforts: rooms, halls and dining areas that can be cold in winter, cramped semi-private dining rooms where voices carry, food that never changes, pricey drinks, one hairdryer in the changing room, and horseflies in August. One December 2025 reviewer reported men loitering near the women's entrance to the mixed bath and felt the front desk brushed it off. Since September 2024 children aged 12 and under are not accepted.
Room Selection Guide
What the guests who stayed here actually recommendRecommended
New-building Moegi (萌黄) rooms
The most common room type: 10 tatami plus a sunroom, kotatsu, and your own bath and toilet. Guests chose it over the main building for the in-room toilet; a couple paid ¥33,550 per person with two meals in 2021 for a third-floor room (third-floor guests get extra amenities and a free drinks corner; second floor is about ¥2,000 cheaper).
Moegi with beds, for easier access
One room with beds, nearest the lift, which the inn recommends for older guests. The lift in the new building goes down to the baths.
Request To Avoid
Main-building (本館) rooms
The cheaper option (reviewers paid around ¥21,000–22,000 per person), but toilets, washbasins and baths are shared. Some guests booked in the main building were upgraded for free — don't count on it.
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Dining Deep Dive
Breakfast Consensus
4.4/5Onsen-kayu — rice porridge simmered for an hour in the spring water — with a Japanese breakfast; the lounge offers drinks and snacks from 8:00 to 10:00
Soak in the mixed bath in the evening or early morning, when overnight guests often have it almost to themselves; day visitors come from 10:30 to 13:30. The bath closes for cleaning 10:00–10:30 and 14:00–15:00.
Dinner Insights
4.1/5The Shinano course of 14 dishes in machiya-style private dining rooms, with a choice of Japanese black beef or mochi pork, plus iwana, Shinshu salmon and toji-soba. Most reviewers are satisfied 'in both quality and quantity', but a 2025 couple found the room 'really cramped', one iwana burnt and the other undercooked, and a tiny croquette; others say there are too many courses, the menu never changes, voices carry between rooms and drinks are overpriced.
Onsen & Wellness Realities
A sulphurous calcium-magnesium-bicarbonate spring, 37.3°C at the source, pH 6.3 and drinkable, flowing at 1,730 litres a minute. The inn says the hotter indoor tub is warmed by heat exchange without adding water; one booking site lists it as heated and diluted.
The big outdoor bath is mixed, open overnight, with separate entrances; women enter from their own changing room down about six slippery steps, and the water is opaque so you can move about crouching. Wraps are free for overnight guests only (day visitors pay ¥800 for a towel). Men reach it by a long corridor from the men's indoor bath; women can't go directly from the women's indoor bath. At 37–38°C it's lukewarm — lovely in summer, chilly in winter — and there are no women-only hours. Separate indoor baths (37°C and about 40°C) and small outdoor baths for each sex. No private bath.
No policy found on the official or Japanese booking sites — contact the inn. There are no private baths.
Local Warnings & Nuances
- 01
Children aged 12 and under are not accepted (from September 2024).
- 02
Getting there: train from Matsumoto to Shin-Shimashima (30 minutes), then about 70 minutes by bus to the 'Awanoyu-mae' stop (the bus runs mid-April to mid-November in 2026). By car it's about an hour from Matsumoto IC.
- 03
Winter driving: the inn warns that two-wheel drive with studless tyres alone is dangerous — carry chains — and guests describe skidding and getting stuck on Route 300.
- 04
Check-in 15:00 (to 18:00), check-out 10:00. An accommodation tax of ¥200 per person per night applies from June 2026.
- 05
Day bathing (¥1,000, 10:30–13:30) can close at short notice — phone ahead.
Sources
The real blog posts and stay reports this article draws on
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Photo credits: Utsukushigahara plateau, above Matsumoto · MitsunoriEgawa / CC BY 4.0 / Hiiragiya — the frontage on Anekoji-dori, Kyoto · Mariemon / CC BY 3.0 / Mukaitaki in the snow, Higashiyama Onsen, Aizu-Wakamatsu · Fumihiko Ueno / CC BY 3.0
Awanoyu
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