Yufuin Souan Kosumosu

A 12-room 'cooking inn' remodelled by Seven Stars train designer Eiji Mitooka, steps from Lake Kinrin, with free-flowing spring water in every bath and open-air tubs in the cottages — but it sits on Yufuin's busiest strip, the shared baths are small and the cheapest rooms have only a shower

Souan Kosumosu opened in 1987 between Yufuin's Yunotsubo shopping street and Lake Kinrin and has always called itself a 'cooking inn'. In 2017 Eiji Mitooka, designer of JR Kyushu's Seven Stars train, remodelled the whole house: kumiko latticework, patterned sofas, and tables, chairs and low beds on tatami. Shoes come off at the door and the corridors are tatami throughout. The main building has three room types; the cottages, linked by a wooden walkway, each have their own open-air bath. The inn says every bath — two gender-separated baths, two family baths and the cottage tubs — runs free-flowing weakly alkaline spring water (pH 8.2), and the family baths are free and unbooked, first come, first served. Japanese guests rate it 4.84 across 53 reviews on one leading site (food 4.92), 4.8 across 300 on another and 4.73 across 219 on a third. Bloggers from 2022 to 2024 praised the handmade welcome sweets, a dashi-led kaiseki of hamo, grilled ayu, shamo hotpot and Bungo beef, and above all the inn's home-grown rice at breakfast; reviewers keep remarking how quiet it is inside despite the crowds outside. The catches: it sits on Yufuin's busiest strip, the shared baths are small (the lowest-scored category on two of the three sites), the cheapest main-building rooms have only a shower, and a 2023 cottage guest found insects at night and a toilet that barely flushed. A minority in 2025–2026 found the food ordinary for the price or wanted more polished service. Two-meal stays run about ¥38,000–55,000 per person.