Takanosukan

Every bath here, indoors and out, draws straight from the inn's own spring. Ten detached cottages each have their own bath: several are open-air and walled in for privacy, one combines an indoor and outdoor tub, and a couple are built around a small moat, big enough for three or four. One cottage's indoor bath is set with stones from the Arakawa riverbed. Guests staying in the main building share a separate-sex communal bath of natural stone and cypress, its outdoor tub shaded by double cherry blossoms in spring. The water itself is clear and mild. You reach the inn on foot, over a pedestrian suspension bridge across the Arakawa; cars stop at a shared lot with the campsite before it. Local legend says a boatman once found an injured hawk bathing in a puddle on the riverbank and traced the warm water to the spring beneath it, which is how Takanosu ("hawk's nest") got its name. The spring was found in 1806, and the inn has run since 1891, inside Bandai-Asahi National Park. It belongs to the Nihon Hitou wo Mamoru Kai (日本秘湯を守る会), the association of Japan's secluded hot-spring inns.