Road station Tsubakihananoyu

Tsubaki (椿温泉) sits on the thin strip of flat land between the mountains and the sea, on the Ohechi (大辺路) branch of the Kumano Kodo, and the spring was in use for centuries before the roadside station was built around it in 2010. The story goes that some four hundred years ago a temple priest kept noticing white herons come down into the valley, followed them, and found one soaking an injured leg in hot water. The Tsubaki Yakushido (椿薬師堂) went up in the 1660s and the bath was looked after as temple property from then on. It is a simple sulfur spring, pH 9.9, surfacing at about 32 degrees, and the local way of putting it is that you feel like you are sitting in oil: thick and slippery the way high-alkaline water is, and the warmth stays with you long after you get out. All of it runs kakenagashi (掛け流し). Besides the main bath there is a lukewarm one-person tub cut from maki (槇) wood, private family baths you can book, and a free footbath outside, put there by a former guest who came to convalesce and got better. There is also a vending machine that will fill a tank with the onsen water to take home.