Nosegawa Onsen Hotel Nosegawa

A hot-spring hotel at the end of a forest road in Nosegawa, which the hotel will tell you is the least populated village in Honshu, with mountains and greenery filling the bath windows. The water is classed as a simple sulfur spring but comes out clear and without the smell, strongly alkaline at pH 10.4 and properly slippery on the skin, and it is warmed slowly in a wood-fired boiler using timber from the forest around the village. The baths are indoor, two on the men's side and two on the women's. Between Koyasan and the Kohechi (小辺路) route of the Kumano Kodo (熊野古道) it makes an easy base, and guests staying the night can be picked up at Koyasan station.