Totsukawa Onsen Hotel Subaru

Deep in the southern Nara mountains, in the village of Totsukawa, quiet enough that wind and birdsong are most of what you hear. The source was found along the Kamiyu river (上湯川) back in the Genroku era (元禄), and Totsukawa was the first onsen area in Japan to declare its baths fully source-fed. Here that works out to 70°C water at 800 litres a minute, nothing heated, nothing recirculated. The bathing area gives you a wide-windowed indoor bath, an open-air bath over the valley, a reclining bath and a waterfall bath for your shoulders, plus small cypress and goemon (五右衛門) tubs sized for one person under the sky. There is a drinking spring of the same water, a footbath by the front entrance, hinoki (檜) tubs in some of the rooms, and a 25 metre pool filled with onsen water, which is not something you run into often.