Bankokuya

Bankokuya is a big, long-running ryokan in Atsumi Onsen, a hot spring town in the hills above the Atsumi River with something like a thousand years of history. The bathing here comes in two pairs: two indoor bathhouses on the third floor, Rakuzan (楽山) and Rakusui (楽水), and two rock-lined outdoor baths in the garden below, Sakura no Yu and Sato no Yu (里の湯), with men and women swapping sides through the day. One of the indoor baths adds a barrel sauna and a fine-bubble "silk bath," and a few guest rooms have their own hinoki tub fed straight from the spring. It's a big inn, 104 rooms, but it keeps small things from its past too: old building material still sits at the entrance to the third-floor bathhouse, a trace of three centuries running this house. Writers and poets, Matsuo Basho among them, have been stopping in this valley for about as long as anyone's kept count.