Obokekyo Mannaka

A 14-room gorge inn three minutes from its own sightseeing-boat pier, renovated in 2024 with gadget-packed rooms, a pour-your-own sauna and local-produce kaiseki at a fair price — but the spring is cold and recirculated, the open-air bath is an artificial mineral bath, and road and train noise reach it

Obokekyo Mannaka is the inn of the company that runs the Oboke Gorge sightseeing boats. It sits beside a red road bridge on Route 32, three minutes' walk from the pier and 1.5 km from JR Oboke Station, where staff collect guests for free. It's on the Yoshino River gorge, not in the Iya Valley itself, which is about 30 minutes' drive away. From outside the building looks dated — '1980s', one 2025 reviewer wrote — but all 14 rooms were renovated in March 2024, and by 2024 the lobby with its tatami hearth corner, the dining hall and the baths had been redone too; a self-service löyly sauna followed in late 2024 and massage-chair lounges in 2025. Japanese guests rate it 4.60 across 1,935 reviews on one major site and a rounded 5.0 across 515 on another (service 4.8, cleanliness 4.9, rooms, bath and both meals 4.7), and it won a Rakuten Travel Gold Award for 2025. Most recent evidence comes from booking-site reviews, backed by two 4travel bloggers who stayed in November 2024 and March 2025. They praise the gap between the tired exterior and the polished interior, Dyson dryers, ReFa shower heads and long lending lists, dinners of ayu, soba-subeshi and white-miso country hotpot, station pick-ups and a send-off waved until the car is out of sight. The catches: the indoor baths use a cold (18°C) simple sulphur spring that the inn heats and recirculates, while the open-air and private baths are artificial mineral baths; road traffic and trains are audible from the outdoor tub (2024–2025); most rooms have only a shower; river-side rooms are loud after rain; and dinner pacing drew complaints in 2023–2024. Two-meal stays ran about ¥15,000–26,000 per person in 2024–2026.