Amanogawa Hot Spring

The village bath at Tenkawa, a short walk from Tenkawa Daibenzaiten shrine (天河大辨財天社). A 2023 refit gave it the name Kigi-no-yu (木木の湯), roughly "the bath of trees", and it is meant literally: the tubs are cut from koyamaki (高野槙, Japanese umbrella pine), the building is finished in Yoshino cedar, cypress, pine and maple, and even the wash buckets and stools are cypress turned from local timber. The water is clear and faintly salty, with no smell to it, a sodium bicarbonate spring that leaves skin slippery. It gets heated in a wood-fired boiler burning thinned timber from the surrounding forest, and you can go look at the boiler from the back rest area. There is an indoor bath and a rock-built rotenburo (露天風呂) facing the mountains, then a big tatami room to flop down in afterwards.