Day-use bathing runs 12:00 to 16:00, but closes at 15:30 in winter.
¥1,500
Adult ¥1,500, child ¥750, tax included.
Bathing & Water
Natural onsen water
Uses natural hot spring water
Outdoor BathYes
Open-air outdoor bath
Indoor BathYes
Enclosed indoor bathing area
Bathing Arrangements
Private BathYes
A private bath you can reserve for yourself or your group
The family bath (家族風呂) functions as a private/reservable bath; day-use booking process not stated.
Mixed BathingYes
Shared bathing area for all genders
Policies & Services
TattooYes
Allows entry with visible tattoos
Unverified
KidsYes
Welcomes children and families
Child day-use pricing is published; no explicit kids policy statement.
DiningYes
A restaurant or dining room open to visitors, not only meals for overnight guests
Small rest-area food stall for day-use visitors (soba, drinks); an aggregator (rurubu.jp) separately describes it as 食事処 serving 信州そば・ちまき.
WashingNo
Shower, wash stations, soap and shampoo provided
Corroborated by an independent travel blog (秘湯宿.com) reporting no shower/tap in the indoor bath (シャワーもカランもなかったように思います); the official site does not describe washing facilities either way.
TowelsYes
Towels to rent or borrow at the desk
Listed as provided guest equipment (備品: yukata, towel); a day-use aggregator (rurubu.jp) separately quotes a ¥300 towel rental fee for day-trip visitors.
ParkingNo
On-site or nearby parking available
No on-site parking; guests use a nearby third-party paid lot (渋温泉旅館組合駐車場) and walk ~10 minutes. Confirmed by aggregator rurubu.jp (駐車場：なし／近隣に有料駐車場あり).
salt's cation — pairs with chloride to make the water salty.
Chloride Cl⁻
table-salt anion — coats the skin and holds heat in.
Known good for
Aches & jointsstiff shoulders
Circulationtired legs
Warmingcold sensitivity
A sodium-calcium sulfate-chloride spring drawn very hot at 83.4 °C — among Japan's hottest natural sources — carrying a faint sulfur note and a slightly bitter taste straight from the wellhead. Neutral in pH and moderately mineralized at 1,346 mg/kg, it has noticeable body in the water. A generous 189 mg/kg of metasilicic acid leaves the kind of silica film that makes skin feel smoother afterwards.
Sampled at wellhead·Analyzed Jul 27, 2016·株式会社科学技術開発センター
Korakukan is the inn that started it all, snow monkeys (Japanese macaques) began bathing in its outdoor pool decades before the neighbouring monkey park opened, and that mixed riverside rotenburo (露天風呂) is still their gathering spot in winter. The water is a mildly alkaline gypsum spring. The inn itself is old and unpolished, which only adds to the atmosphere: staying here means sharing the space with wild monkeys, eating hand-foraged mountain vegetables for dinner, and sleeping in a family-run building with retro games and decades of character.
An old, crumbling ryokan from the list of hito (secret onsen), located right in front of Jigokudani (the monkey onsen park).
The ryokan itself is quite worn — everything creaks, it's dusty, rotting, etc. The staff is literally one old man in sight.
The main draw is the rotenburo where monkeys come, and it's pretty much the only place where you can predictably take a bath with them.
This rotenburo is mixed-gender and VERY visible to crowds of tourists.
An adventure for the bravest. This isn't about relaxation, water, or atmosphere. It's purely about sitting with monkeys in a rotenburo.
Honestly, I wouldn't recommend anyone repeat this. The bath maintenance is clearly not top-notch, the monkeys aren't the cleanest, and they're very genetically close to humans. You can potentially catch all sorts of things.
1500 yen for higaeri. You can also get towels and bathing clothes for women.
44. Jigokudani Hot Spring Korakukan, Nagano ★
This is that well-known, among a small circle of people, human onsen where you can end up together with monkeys. First, a disclaimer for anyone thinking of visiting, all risks related to being in a bath where wild animals hang out are on the visitors themselves, and that has to be accepted.
I was here for a higaeri. It runs from 12:00 to 15:00. The chance of seeing monkeys at the moment you are in the bath is ultra-random. As the ryokan staff explained, the colder it is, the more often the monkeys come. But that is not guaranteed either, when I was going up into the park itself, there were no monkeys in the bath, and when I came back down, there was already a crowd sitting there. Monkeys can also be driven out of the bath at random by other monkeys.
The whole process of going to this bath is pretty cringe, since in practice the bath is visible from every side, from far away on the mountain and very close from the bridge on the side. Women can rent clothes, men are offered a towel to cover themselves, but the small towel from the ryokan itself does not let you wrap it properly around your waist, and the large towel they rent there is really large and colorful.
The monkeys act completely indifferent to the people in the bath, there was me and one very intense Japanese guy. They can even swim past or walk right by along the edge of the bath. The bath itself is surprisingly not dirty, the water is clear, I do not really remember the smell, the temperature is medium, a little below medium. At one point all the monkeys suddenly ran out of the bath because two big monkeys arrived, apparently some kind of hierarchy thing.
If you do come, it is also better to arrive at the opening of the higaeri. When the Japanese guy and I were leaving, there were already 4 women and 2 more Japanese men coming in. I am not sure such a crowd would be received well by the monkeys.
Before the monkey bath in the men’s area, there is also a regular hot square bath. Shower gel is available too.
If the ryokan were in a less busy place and without animals, it would be a very strong and straightforward ryokan, because the views are really good. The relaxation area there is also nice, I would recommend using it while walking around there, whether or not you take the onsen.
04.01.2024
