Yutagami Onsen Hotel Oyanagi

Hotel Oyanagi sits in Yutagami Onsen, at the foot of Mount Gomado in Niigata, with its main baths on the top floor overlooking the Echigo Plain. The open-air bath is built infinity-style with no railing, and both it and the indoor bath share the same view, best known for sunset and, from the outside bath, the city lights at night. Two saunas each sit alongside their own cold plunge, an auto-loyly sauna on the men's side and a self-loyly one using hojicha steam on the women's. The spring water itself is salty and can be drunk at a dedicated corner, a rare licence in the prefecture. A separate reservable bath, built for the inn's 100th anniversary, is barrier-free from the entrance and looks over the same landscape. Some rooms have their own private open-air onsen bath. The spring dates back to the Edo period, when mountain ascetics training on Mount Gomado are said to have used it to recover, and it was formally licensed as a hot-spring resort in 1738. Locally it's known as Yakushi no yu (薬師の湯), the healing-Buddha spring. A foot bath using paulownia wood balls (kiritama, 桐玉) from nearby Kamo, unique to this hotel, is one more way to sit with the water without a full soak.