Tsuta Onsen Ryokan

Hot water that rises through the floorboards under a 1918 wooden inn in the beech forest — superb baths, small dinners, and thin walls in the old wing

Tsuta Onsen is one of the few inns in Japan where the spring rises directly beneath the tubs: the water wells up through gaps in the wooden floor of the bath, never pumped or recirculated, and Japanese guests rate the baths 4.9 out of 5 across 377 reviews on one major site. A bathhouse is recorded here in 1147; the present inn dates from 1909, and its two-storey wooden main building from 1918. The writer Ōmachi Keigetsu lived and died here, and lyricist Okamoto Osami's 1969 honeymoon here inspired the 1972 hit 'Tabi no Yado'. There are 35 rooms in three very different places: the atmospheric 1918 main building (adults only, mostly shared toilets, thin sliding-door walls — two bloggers could hear the room across the corridor), the 1989 concrete West Wing with warmer, renovated rooms, and three detached villas added in 2022 that are the only rooms with their own spring-water bath. The old Kyūan-no-yu bath has no showers at all — you wash with water scooped from the overflow — and alternates between men and women; the newer Senkyō-no-yu has a ceiling 12 metres high. Dinner, served in the restaurant, uses local produce such as Mutsu Bay scallops, Lake Towada wakasagi and Ogawara-ko beef, but portions are the most common complaint, from 2022 to September 2026. The inn is seasonal and closes in winter.