Find Your Perfect Ryokan

The Akiu Onsen inn run by one family for a claimed thousand years, 173 rooms in a 26,000 square metre garden, 30 minutes from Sendai.

The inn at Yamashiro Onsen's source, run for 18 generations, where Rosanjin stayed in the Taisho era; 11 of 17 rooms have source-fed baths.

Kinzan opened in 1929 as a kaiseki restaurant with rooms, and no other ryokan in Hyogo holds both a Michelin star for its food and a five-roof rating for its accommodation. The large baths use Arima's iron-rich gold kinsen water, while the East Building rooms have semi-open-air baths of silver ginsen. The 31 rooms are for adults only.

Nakanobo Zuien has received guests in Arima Onsen since 1868, and Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, once visited its Japanese garden. Eight of the 47 rooms include a rotenburo filled with golden kinsen water, and a family bath of silver ginsen is free without booking. Guests must be 13 or older, and Kobe beef appears as teppanyaki in the Kuriya chef's room as well as in the kaiseki.

Adrian Zecha's first Azumi, in the Horiuchi merchant house on Ikuchi Island; guests bathe free at yubune, the bathhouse across the street.

Each of Bettei Oborozukiyo's 19 suites, 78 to 94 square meters, comes with an outdoor tub of blue stone or hinoki cypress filled with Dogo Onsen water, and the largest suite has one of each. The kaiseki menu changes monthly, and Dogo Onsen Honkan, the public bathhouse built in 1894, is a five-minute walk away. Children below elementary school age are not accepted.

Dogo Onsen's most storied inn, with about 390 years of history and imperial guests, a few minutes on foot from the Honkan bathhouse.

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 150-room onsen resort in Kowakudani, opened in 2017, with an open-air bath in every room and free entry to Yunessun next door.

Hakujukan opened in 2019 steps from Eiheiji, a head temple of Soto Zen, and is built from cedar grown on the temple's grounds. Guests can sit zazen, copy sutras and join the monks for the temple's morning service. Dinner at Restaurant Suisen is either shojin ryori developed with Eiheiji and overseen by its head cook, or a Japanese set meal, and the 18 rooms have showers, so guests bathe in the shared Kosui-kai hot spring.

A grand Kyoto ryokan since 1818, blending refined traditional architecture with impeccable kaiseki hospitality in the city center.

Honjin Hiranoya Kachoan stands beside the red Nakabashi Bridge in Takayama's old town, a minute's walk from the Jinya morning market. Dinner is an A5 Hida beef kaiseki in a private room, with the beef grilled on a magnolia leaf, simmered and served as sushi, and the menu changes monthly. The women's bath is set in a traditional folk house, and the 28-room inn also runs a sushi restaurant, Sushicho.