Find Your Perfect Ryokan

The oldest inn at Higashiyama Onsen, an Edo-era Aizu clan retreat whose early Showa wooden buildings are a registered cultural property.

A legendary mountain hot spring inn in the Hakkoda Mountains with Japan's largest wooden communal bath, a thousand-person capacity cedar bathhouse dating to 1684.

Nishiya Besso's main house is a 200-year-old farmhouse that was moved from Niigata and rebuilt in the Azumino forest, its original beams darkened by centuries of hearth smoke and kept above a working irori. Its five rooms share three private baths, a pair indoors and one in the garden, all filled with free-flowing water from Nakabusa Onsen. Dinner is eaten by the irori and includes river char slow-grilled for 90 minutes, and the inn accepts cash only.

Dinner at Bettei Yamabuki is a kaiseki with unlimited drinks, and the grounds hold a winery and a sake bar. The 10 rooms are spread across 7,600 m² at Togatta Onsen below Mount Zao, and the free-flowing baths rotate so that different ones are open before and after dinner. Some rooms come with their own hot spring tub, and a private bath can be reserved.

Budget-friendly family-run guesthouse in Hakone with real volcanic onsen water from Owakudani.

Fujiiso's rooms are cantilevered over the Matsukawa Valley gorge at Yamada Onsen, and the inn's past guests include the writers Mori Ogai, Yosano Akiko and Kikuchi Kan. The men's bath is rebuilt in fresh Kiso cypress every three years, and in warm weather the partitions of the open-air bath are opened to the canyon. The house dish is Ponpon Nabe, an oil fondue of local mountain vegetables.

A small Lake Kawaguchi inn with Fuji-view tatami rooms, a hot spring bath facing the mountain and sukiyaki dinners.

Fumoto has 17 baths for its 14 rooms in Kurokawa Onsen, including a standing bath 160 centimeters deep that is listed as the deepest in Japan. Each room is a detached building with a private outdoor bath, and every bath runs on free-flowing spring water. Guests can buy the village's nyuto tegata pass at check-in to bathe at other Kurokawa inns.

An elegant Taisho-era ryokan in Ginzan Onsen, one of Japan's most atmospheric hot spring villages, with a photogenic cobbled riverfront setting.

A 20-room ryokan at the top of the Gora cable car, where every room has its own open-air onsen bath fed straight from the source.

Hakone's benchmark luxury ryokan, on the grounds of an imperial prince's summer villa in Gora, three minutes on foot from Gora Station. Kaiseki is usually served in your room.

A five-room Oshino inn opened in 2022, where every room has its own entrance, garden and half open-air hot spring bath.