Yudanaka Yumoto

Yudanaka Yumoto has operated as an inn since the Edo period, when it received the area's first innkeeper's license, and it still displays calligraphy by the haiku poets Kobayashi Issa (小林一茶) and Ogiwara Seisensui (荻原井泉水). The bathing is kakenagashi natural spring water with a light saltiness, split between two rooms, Shigure-no-yu (時雨の湯), which has a stone garden rotenburo attached, and Nyoi-no-yu (如意の湯); the two swap between men's and women's on a set schedule each night. Rooms and the dining room look out over a green inner garden that the ryokan has kept intact, with bush warblers in spring, fireflies in early summer and autumn leaves, unlike many older inns whose gardens disappeared as buildings around them grew taller.