Ryuuki

Ryuuki is a 24-room ryokan on the Uenohara plateau above Muikamachi Onsen in Minamiuonuma, Niigata. Bathing is split across five separate indoor tubs fed by the same salty hot-spring source: a plain natural-onsen bath, one lined with natural stone, an herbal soak blended with pine needle and kelp, a Himalayan rock-salt bath where you lie back on a floating log raft, and a bath treated to feel especially smooth on the skin. The bathhouse windows look out on the surrounding mountains. There is also a separate, extra-fee lie-down bath heated by fifteen kinds of medicinal stone, worn in a rental robe rather than nude bathing, mixed-gender and entered from the men's side. Guest rooms are tatami or tatami-and-bed, with no private bath, so all bathing is in the shared baths. The inn sits among fields along a mountain road near the ski slopes, and reviewers mostly come back for the food: Niigata rice and mountain vegetables at dinner and breakfast.