Maruya

Maruya is a six-room inn in Shibayama, a small fishing port on the Sea of Japan coast in Hyogo's Tajima (但馬) region. There's no shared communal bath, only private kashikiri (貸切) baths that don't need advance reservation. On the ground floor they are rock baths built straight into the hillside behind the inn; upstairs, an indoor tub is paired with a semi-open-air tub. The spring water is mild and smooth on the skin, gentle enough that families bathe together with small children. Two of the room types also have a small cypress tub of their own, though that one runs plain hot water rather than the spring. The building is a wooden house with a modern renovation, and an 1880 earthen-walled storehouse on the grounds has been turned into a small cafe. A restaurant serves seasonal local fish through the warmer months, and the inn has a following for its crab dinners, built around the tagged snow crab landed right at Shibayama's own port.