Oishiya Inn

Ooishiya draws its bathwater from a spring on the inn's own grounds, just steps from the tubs, and it comes out clear, odorless and gentle on the skin. The indoor bath is split by gender and includes both a cooler tub and a hotter one. The same spring water goes into the rice served at meals. The inn is a two-story wooden ryokan whose current owner is the seventh generation to run it since it opened in the late Edo period. It sits in Deyu Onsen, one of Niigata's oldest hot springs, said to have been opened in 809 by the monk Kobo Daishi (弘法大師) and once recorded in an Edo-period ranking of the country's hot springs.