Natural Hot Spring Harunonoyu

24/9/2019

To the north of the walking path, about 2 km north of Tanemaji (T34). A nice onsen/hotel. I did a walk in as I decided to cut my day short. There is an interesting, small municipal museum about 1.5km to the south which shows some archaeological information on the excavation of the castle which (I think) was originally on the hotel site .

Cost: 5150 Yen, including onsen, not including meals.

Food: There is a refectory style restaurant, which does a range of foods. I cant recall what I had, so it was probably acceptable, neither very good nor very bad. There is a combini very close to the hotel (across the road/intersection).

Onsen: The loveliest one I saw.

(no photos)

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The hotel turned out to be bigger and somewhat more upmarket than I had expected. Even though still slightly uncomfortable with the concept of public bathing, I did spend 40 minutes in the onsen. The shower areas had low privacy screens so whilst still quite open they were not too bad. From there a bather could go to three indoor pools. I couldn’t tell why there were so many, they all seemed to have their water set 40°C.

Outside under an open shelter were some bubblers, somewhat like a group of spa baths all joined together. Their temperature was 37.5° or so the sign said. Each individual spa was about the size of a bath tub and had stones shaped to give a reclining posture with the person‘s head on a stone pillow. It was surprisingly very comfortable and I stayed in this one the longest. Then there was a totally exposed outdoor rock pool which had a cave feature. Finally a shower area with about 2 inch solid water jets, but they were cooler so not as invigorating as they might have been.

When I went in there weren’t that many other bathers on the scene, but I suppose due to approaching teatime more people came in, including fathers with quite small boys, some less than two-year-old I should think. Otherwise a big range of body types and ages, including at least one older Japanese man who made even me look slim!