Sennentei

Sennentei sits on a small peninsula that pokes out into Lake Togo. Its baths include an open-air bath and a panoramic-view bath that both look straight over the water, a large natural-stone bath called Sennen no Yu (千年の湯), and two private, reservation-only baths right at the water's edge, a cypress tub called Kinrin (金鱗) and a ceramic one called Ginrin (銀鱗), six baths in total. Twenty-one of the special guest rooms have their own source-fed bath, and a few of those also add a private Finnish sauna and cold plunge. The shared baths swap between men and women daily, and the spring is kept flowing fresh rather than treated or diluted. The inn traces back to 1866, when a local named Kosuke found hot water welling up from the lake bed while out net-fishing, and built a makeshift bath there from bamboo pipes and moored boats. He became the first proprietor of what is now Sennentei, and the open-air bath here today, Kosuke-yu (幸助湯), still carries his name.