Tobira Onsen Myojinkan

A valley hideaway with a famous standing bath and warm, attentive service — the French dinner is the one thing guests argue about

Myojinkan sits alone in a mountain valley above Matsumoto, and Japanese guests keep coming back for three things. The baths: a 24-hour standing bath beside the river (guests watch fish in the stream while they soak), a lukewarm reclining bath designed for lingering, and an octagonal indoor bath, plus rooms with their own onsen on the terrace. The service: a returning guest found the staff remembered a shiitake allergy from three years earlier, left a message spelled out in ginkgo leaves outside the window, and handed out free rice balls as a late-night snack; check-out is at noon. And the food — which is also where the disagreement lies. Dinner at the Nature French restaurant 'Sai' is local and ambitious (venison consommé scented with kuromoji wood, veal with wild mountain vegetables), and a 2024 guest called it 'very delicious French, with both meat and fish'. But a 2020 guest found the pairings 'too idiosyncratic' and the rabbit gamey, another noted courses came so slowly that some diners left before dessert, and everyone agrees breakfast is excellent. On one Japanese review site the inn ranks fourth of 80 in Matsumoto (3.79 out of 5), with the main complaints about getting there: a 30–40 minute shuttle, occasional waits, and a narrow final stretch of road.