Okumizuma Onsen

A single inn (ikken-yado, 一軒宿) standing on its own in the wooded hills above Kaizuka, about 50 minutes by car from central Osaka. The water is a very concentrated natural sodium spring that the inn calls its bijin-no-yu (美人の湯), the beauty bath, and it feeds an indoor bath and an open-air bath on both the men's and women's sides. The rest of the place has an unhurried, slightly old-fashioned country feel: a lobby looking onto the garden, big tatami banquet rooms, karaoke and a table tennis corner, a stream you can fish, and a pool that opens for the summer holidays.