Wataya Bessou

A sprawling riverside resort reinventing itself with tea, books, a Pierre Hermé shop and workspaces around a 1977 Kisho Kurokawa tower — great water and dinners, but choose a renovated room

Wataya Bessou spreads across 20,000 tsubo on both banks of the Ureshino river, with 102 rooms in several buildings: a 12-storey tower designed by Kisho Kurokawa in 1977, the open-air-bath rooms of Miyabikan and Kachōen, the Taishō-retro Onsenkyō wing, and the detached Suimeisō around a relocated Nabeshima-domain villa where the Shōwa emperor and empress stayed. The inn has been reinventing itself: former guest rooms are now satellite offices, and the grounds host a book-and-tea shop, a Made in Pierre Hermé café, a tea salon, a whisky bar and well-being programmes from riverside sauna to tea courses. The water — Ureshino's silky sodium bicarbonate-chloride spring from the inn's own source — flows into the baths with water added only to cool it. Japanese guests rate it 4.12 across 1,191 reviews on one major site and 4.0 across 244 on another, scoring dinner, service and the water well and rooms and facilities lowest. Dinners centred on Ureshino onsen-yudōfu and Saga beef or Wakakusu pork shabu-shabu are generous. The complaints concentrate in unrenovated tower rooms — age, smells, mould, air conditioning that won't cool — plus maze-like walks with stairs to the main bath, weak showers, private baths closed for now and facilities such as the Suimeisō sauna out of action without notice. Tower rooms with breakfast start around ¥21,780 for two; one couple paid about ¥75,000 for two with two meals in a top-floor room.