Yamanaka Onsen Shirasagiyu Tawaraya

The last of Yamanaka's twelve founding inns: a riverside open-air bath on the Kakusenkei gorge and inventive Kaga kaiseki for a fair price — but the building is old, the water is recirculated, staff don't show you to your room, and insects find the in-room baths in late summer

Tawaraya traces its story to the Kamakura period, when — so the inn tells it — a local lord saw a white heron soaking an injured leg in Yamanaka's spring and had twelve retainers revive the spa. Tawaraya is the only one of those twelve founding inns still operating, and the rice bales stacked by the door recall the days when bathers paid in rice. Today it's a 43-room house built down the side of the Kakusenkei gorge, with the lobby on the fifth floor and the baths at river level. The draws are Kakusen, a big open-air bath right beside the rushing river, and Kaga kaiseki served on Yamanaka lacquer and Kutani porcelain. Japanese guests rate it 4.7 across 1,238 reviews on one major site (dinner and baths both 4.7) and 4.54 across 992 on another. Reviewers in 2025–2026 single out menus that explain each dish and its growers, creative touches such as a chilled pumpkin soup, rice cooked in a pot with spring water, the steamed Kaga-vegetable and nodoguro breakfast, free drinks in the lobby, and kind care for children, allergies and older parents. A blogger who came in winter 2026 for tagged Kano crab was moved by the raw crab sashimi. Since 2023 the inn has added suites with their own open-air spring bath, a sauna twin (October 2025) and a riverside sauna in the Kajika bath (November 2025). The catches: the building feels old, the cheapest old-wing rooms have no bath, nobody shows you to your room, a booking site lists the water as heated and recirculated, insects get into the in-room baths in late summer, and some 2026 reviewers found the portions small or the top menu underwhelming. Two-meal stays run about ¥17,000–41,000 per person.