Ryokan Omuraya

Ureshino's oldest inn, reinvented around records and books, with silky 'beauty' water and a breakfast of tofu melted in hot-spring water — great value in the renovated rooms, less so in the old washitsu

Omuraya traces its founding to 1830 — a paving stone bears the date, since a 1922 fire destroyed most records — and is said to have served as a secondary official inn on the Nagasaki Kaidō; the calligrapher Nakabayashi Gochiku made it a regular inn. The 15th-generation owner has turned it into an 'inn for enjoying music and books after your bath': a lounge with thousands of records, a library, a music bar, record players in some rooms, and bathing music for the large baths composed by Shigeru Kishida of Quruli. The water comes from the inn's own 92.5°C well, a sodium bicarbonate-chloride spring that leaves skin silky. Japanese guests rate it 4.60 across 511 reviews on one major site and 4.5 across 1,328 on another, with service and baths highest. Breakfast is the famous Ureshino onsen-yudōfu — tofu simmered in spring water until it melts — and dinner centres on tea-shabu or Saga beef, finished with a much-loved milk pudding. The weak spots: the older washitsu rooms (stains, worn cushions, a toilet door that wouldn't close), cleaning lapses, a bar that isn't open every night, private baths that now cost ¥4,400 per 50 minutes, and an indoor large bath that is recirculated. Weekday stays start around ¥18,000 per person with two meals before tax.