Echigo-Yuzawa Onsen Shosenkaku Kagetsu

A warm, family-run 28-room inn five minutes from the Shinkansen, loved for its service, free lounge drinks and Uonuma rice — but only the five top-floor rooms have their own free-flowing bath, and 2026 reviewers keep calling dinner thin

Shosenkaku Kagetsu greets every guest with 'okaeri' — welcome home — and the whole inn is built on that idea: matcha and sweets at check-in, a kotatsu lounge with free coffee, herbal tea, sake, sparkling wine and snacks at set times, hand-drawn menus and maps, and an okami and team that reviewers praise above all else. It's a 28-room house five minutes' walk from Echigo-Yuzawa Station, and Trip.com named it one of the world's 100 best ski hotels. Only one first-hand blog with a recent stay turned up (a family in March 2024), so most recent evidence comes from booking-site reviews. Japanese guests rate it 4.3 across 517 reviews on one major site, with service at 4.8 but dinner at only 3.9, 4.58 across 440 on another and 4.57 across 73 on a third. The five fifth-floor rooms each have an open-air bath of free-flowing Yuzawa spring water; everyone else uses two smallish shared baths that swap at midnight and, by the inn's own account, run partly through a filter — one September 2026 guest found the disinfectant smell strong. Breakfast, with Minamiuonuma Koshihikari rice and egg-on-rice you whip yourself, draws near-universal praise. Dinner is the weak point: from May to October 2026 several guests called the kaiseki short on dishes and lacking a main course, one found the beef too tough to chew, and a long-time repeat guest said quality had fallen two years running. Others mention dust, futons already laid at check-in, shared slippers and thin walls. Two-meal stays run about ¥19,000–28,000 per person in a standard room, over ¥30,000 with a private bath.