Unzen Fukudaya

Milky, free-flowing sulphur water in eight baths and a much-loved kaiseki with lava-grilled abalone and cheese fondue, at fair prices — but most main-building rooms have tap-water baths, and the old building is a maze of steps

Fukudaya opened in September 1968 as Hotel New Unzen and has kept reinventing itself: renamed a folk-craft inn in 1988 and a 'mingei modern' inn in 2011, it added the seven-room Yamaterrace annex in 2017 and rebuilt its main-building rooms in spring 2023 as twin-bedded Japanese-Western rooms, some with a sauna. It's a 34-room house a short walk from the Unzen Jigoku vents. The draw is the water: a milky, acidic sulphur spring (pH 2.4) that the inn says runs free-flowing into all its baths — two open-air baths, two indoor baths with saunas and four private baths, two of them free for guests. Japanese guests rate it 4.6 across 3,470 reviews on one major site (dinner 4.8), 4.52 across 890 on another and 4.55 across 120 on a third; most recent evidence comes from these booking-site reviews, backed by a 2024 blog stay and a June 2026 travelogue. They praise the soft, skin-smoothing baths, a kaiseki served in private dining rooms — live abalone grilled on lava stone, A5 Nagasaki wagyu suki-shabu and a surprisingly popular vegetable cheese fondue — plus teppanyaki and counter-tempura alternatives, a clay-pot rice breakfast and warm, unhurried staff. Know before you book: most main-building rooms have heated tap-water tubs, not onsen; only the Panorama Twins and the annex rooms have spring-fed open-air baths. 2026 reviewers mention a maze of corridors and steps with one lift, dated fittings behind the renovation, an over-soft mattress, very low beds in the annex, lukewarm summer baths, ants at one room bath and a kaiseki menu unchanged for years. Two-meal stays run about ¥16,000–30,000+ per person.