Minshuku Sumiya

A family minshuku of five rooms in the middle of Kawayu Onsen, where the hot spring rises straight up through the gravel of the Otogawa river (大塔川). The house bath is a small indoor one, fed from the source and booked privately, so it is yours or your family's while you are in it. The rest of the bathing is outside: from March the local minshuku jointly run an open-air bath on the riverbank, Kawayu Yakushi-no-yu (川湯薬師の湯), you can borrow a shovel and dig your own pool in the stones, and from the start of December to the end of February the river is dammed into Sennin-buro (仙人風呂), a bath 35 to 50 metres across.