Onsen/Rotenburo at various locations

Hi All,

I'm in Japan for 2 weeks mid-May to early June, and I'm looking for an authentic experience in between reasonably priced accommodation. Ideally I'd like to get one or two Ryokan visits in during this trip, and as we are a mixed group - private onsens/rotenburo where possible.

The areas we will stay are currently looking like:
1) Hiroshima/Miyajima Island
2) Kobe
3) Osaka
4) Kyoto
5) Tokyo

Please advise on what are the best options for the areas above, or which areas we should prioritise onsen experiences. For the first two, there are only two of us, but the others there will be six of us if that makes a difference.

Much appreciated!

1) Hiroshima/Miyajima Island
2) Kobe
3) Osaka
4) Kyoto
5) Tokyo
well, none of these destinations are specially known for their onsen. Onsen is more a rural / mountain enjoyment, the same goes with Ryokan. There are ryokan in Kyoto (and probably also in all the other cities) but a typical ryokan would be more in the countryside/small town.

So if you are interested in staying somewhere outside of the above mentioned locations, there will be more traditional onsen locations. E.g. relatively close to Tokyo is Hakone and Izu peninsula. I personally liked a ryokan in Izu we have stayed in once much more than Hakone.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g790340-d1077509-Reviews-Japa...

But be warned, it is expensive!

It has a private bath that you need to reserve and then can use for about 1 h. It was free of charge.

I am no expert about Kansai, but I guess there are also onsen cities similarly close as Hakone and Izu peninsula close to Kansai / Hiroshima area, but not terribly close.

If you consider going to Takayama (which I personally did not like ,but I liked Shirakawago), you could stay at Hirayu onsen. I stayed at Mori no yu, which was a surprisingly cheap onsen stay and had an enormous rotenburo area:
https://bicycletraveljapan.blogspot.com/2017/09/onsen-ranking.html (totally personally biased selection of onsen I used in the last 2 - 3 months)

There are also 2 private baths free of charge at a first come, first serve basis. But the much nicer space is the communal one.

If you are in a group you could obviously also look into onsen with mixed bathing. I.e. it is public bathing, but mixed.

Be warned that tattoos are frowned upon in Japan and you may have problems in many onsen and might not be admitted if you have any tattoos (even a small one). In that case private bathing is the only option.

Additionally if it is bathing only you want to experience there are a lot of day-spas. And in many onsen towns, you can stay in one hotel but buy a ticket to the onsen of the neighbouring hotels as well.

Enjoy your trip to Japan!

I've not personally been, but Arima onsen is near Kobe. It's rather well known and is supposed to be nice. There are also a few ryokan on Miyajima that offer onsen. In Kansai, a lot of people will also travel 2 hours to Kinosaki onsen or some of the onsen on the Kii Peninsula. My friends really enjoyed both, but the trip will take you about 2 hours each way to either.

There is Kurama onsen in Kyoto, it's small but within an easy visit to Kyoto and I've seen an expensive Ryokan in Arashiyama that offers some sort of onsen.

Though as @LikeBike said, none of the locations you've mentioned really make me think onsen/rotemboro experience. I've also been to Hirayu no Mori and it had an impressive amount of onsen to use. I did not stay over night. I stayed at the Associa in Takayama which had two floors of baths. I think they had a private bath you could rent but I wasn't interested. The Associa is very much a hotel though and not a ryokan.

I strongly recommend you Hakone Kowakien Yunessun (” �ª�¬—O‰€ƒ†ƒlƒbƒTƒ“).If you go only once time,I am sure,you will want to go another 14 Days or entire time you visit in Japanese island.Here,you get one Bonus thing.That is a Buffet restaurant,where your Friends will eat unlimited amount of Food and Drinks item.You can also say this place as hotspring (‰·�ò) theme park.

Agreed with the above. That said, we had a good onsen on Miyajima at Grand Hotel Arimoto (very nice experience but more of a hotel). There are also some nice ryokan at Uji (between Kyoto and Nara), we stayed at Hanayashiki which had good baths and nice views (again more of a hotel style).

There are good ryokan with nice baths at Hikone (just near Kyoto, on Lake Biwa) and that is a really pretty town with a great castle, probably my favorite castle (so far).

Closer to Tokyo, at Enoshima (awesome little island just off Kamakura, really recommended) there is Iwamotoro Honkan. That is a great ryokan with views of Mt Fuji early in the morning, it has great onsen - one in a cave setup, and the other a roman bath style made in the 1920s. That is our favorite place to finish a trip.

Arima Onsen is actually in Kobe City, on its mountainside.

Kinosaki Onsen is accessible by bus from Osaka, Kobe and Himeji.

On your way from Kyoto to Tokyo, you can make side trips to Ito and Atami in Shizuoka Prefecture.

Or, you might hope to take a route via Kanazawa and travel as far as to Kaga Onsen.

From Tokyo you can go to Kusatsu and Minakami in Gunma Prefecture.

If you are going to tokyo you could also take a day trip to Nikko! Or you could stay there one night and be there two days. I went to Nikko and stayed in a hotel that had a onsen inside of our room and there was also a bigger family type one which we were able to reserve by telling our hotel front desk. I stayed there one night two days in Nikko with my family and for one of the days we went to Nikko Edo Wonderland which was a fun experience. Just a suggestion though!

Thank you all very much, certainly a lot more factors to consider than I thought, but definitely sounds like the side trips are worth it.

In some of the more rural areas however, I am worried about communication, will we have much trouble in the areas and places you have recommended?

Do you mean communication in English?

Well, yes, in general in Japan English communication can be difficult, even in big cities (except large high cost hotels). But people are friendly and will help you around. Japanese do understand that they can't speak English, but they have a good communication strategy to still explain you what you need to know.

So I would not be worried about lack of English in the countryside (or elsewhere in Japan).

I think Hakone has a decent amount of English or at least as much English as you'll find in a lot of big cities since it's an easy day trip from Tokyo as does Kamakura and Enoshima. Kamakura/Enoshima is not that far from a huge US Naval base in Yokosuka.

Thanks again everyone, yes, English language communication worries, as my Japanese is very much a work in progress!

I'm sure the group will get on fine, but wanted to find out in advance. :)

I wouldn't worry too much about communication. We've been to Japan about 10 times, stayed in a fair few onsen ryokan, and have never found it a problem speaking pretty much no Japanese.

The order of things is pretty much the same in all ryokan. Check in, escorted to your room, tea and a sweet, the first question (what time do you want dinner? You can resolve that with a paper and pen, drawing a clock face), the next question (what time for breakfast?), the maid finding some yukata for you (much hilarity about how huge you are - even if you're smaller than the maid, somehow you are officially gigantic because you're a westerner), and then you're good to go....and bathe.

Curtains that hang on the outside of the public baths are often helpfully coloured blue or red/pink to show which sex they are for. If not, then learning the character and/or words for men and women will be useful. There are loads of resources that tell you what to do/not to do in an onsen (basically, wash and rinse BEFORE you get into the tub, don't dip your little towel in the tub, be considerate of other bathers and remember that people are there to relax so be slow and quiet not shouty and splashy).

Other than that, we've always found that if you put the hotel staff as much at their ease as possible (smiling, saying thank you a lot, showing obvious appreciation, taking shoes off before stepping on tatami, ONLY using the toilet slippers in the toilet, doing up your yukata left-over-right and not the other way round, learning some food and drink words and how to say "that's delicious", and always being ready with a judicious "oops, sorry!"), then things go just fine. If you show that you've got good intentions, and are behaving considerately, my view is that this transcends language barriers.

Kaiseki meals follow basically the same path of dishes, with regional differences. A pen and paper, and some charade-playing will generally allow you to work out most of what you're eating, and sometimes will also add to the fun for both you and the person serving you (imagine you think you might be being served duck, or wild boar, for example).

Sure, you'll miss out on loads of details, and are unlikely to have a proper conversation, but lack of language is no real bar to having a good experience. Maybe the one thing to remember is that good ryokan specialise in really high levels of hospitality, so their whole ethos is to make you feel at home. Even if you were to do something that's not quite proper etiquette, then as long as it's not a complete no-no, you are unlikely to even know about it as your host will not want to bring attention to it.

I would definitely make the effort to go somewhere rural for a ryokan stay, rather than in a city, or a big resort area. Calmer, more "authentic", and often better food and baths.