Hataya Hotel

Hataya has two small baths, one for men and one for women, tucked into a half-basement room styled like a little cave. The water runs straight from the source and stays fresh, clear, faintly salty, and noticeably hot. More than one guest has called it scalding at first. The baths are private and used first come, first served, and each one keeps a natural stone locals say helps couples trying to start a family: the men's bath holds the "female stone," the women's the "male stone." It's a six-room wooden ryokan built in the Taisho and Showa eras, in the Shinyu district of Kaminoyama Onsen, five minutes on foot from Kaminoyama Castle. The family who run it grow their own vegetables for old-style country cooking, finish dinner with a bowl of ramen, and turn Yamagata's seasonal fruit into homemade desserts.