Osawa Onsen

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

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Osawa Onsentojiself-cateringriver bathHanamaki

Photo: 掬茶 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) · original

Osawa is a toji inn — a hot spring where people came to stay for weeks and cook for themselves, not for a night of kaiseki. The jisui-bu, the self-catering wing, is a rambling wooden building of dark corridors and shared kitchens that has been in continuous use for a very long time, and it is still run that way: you can take a room, buy food, and cook it.

The bath that draws people is Osawa-no-yu, a mixed open-air pool on the bank of the Toyosawa river directly under the wooden building, with nothing between it and the water. A day ticket at the jisui-bu reception costs ¥600 and covers that plus the indoor Yakushi-no-yu, the Toyosawa bath, the women-only Kawabe-no-yu and, from two to five in the afternoon, the Nanbu-no-yu at the Kikusuikan building.

Informations essentielles

Horaires d'ouverture

Day bathing reception 7:00 AM – 8:30 PM | Nanbu-no-yu at Kikusuikan 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Fermé: Open year-round

Tarif d'entrée

¥600 adults | ¥300 children for day bathing

Meilleure saison

Year-round | Winter for snow on the river bath | Autumn for the valley

Durée de visite

90 minutes – 2 hours

Comment s'y rendre

Informations d'accès

Yuguchi Osawa 181, Hanamaki, in the Hanamaki-Minami hot spring villages. By car or bus from JR Hanamaki Station. The ticket covers Osawa-no-yu, the mixed open-air bath on the Toyosawa river; Yakushi-no-yu indoors; the Toyosawa bath; Kawabe-no-yu, women only; and Nanbu-no-yu at the Kikusuikan building from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Osawa-no-yu has a women-only hour from 8:00 PM.

Guide d'initié

**Osawa-no-yu is mixed.** It is the riverside open-air bath under the wooden wing and the reason most people come. There is a women-only hour from eight in the evening. **One ¥600 ticket covers five baths.** Including one in a different building that opens only from two to five in the afternoon. Arriving after five means missing that one. **The self-catering wing is still self-catering.** Shared kitchens, cheap rooms and people staying for weeks. It is possible to stay here very cheaply and it is a different experience from a ryokan. **Reception opens at seven in the morning.** Early bathing in the river bath before the day visitors arrive is the best hour of the day here. **Miyazawa Kenji came here.** Hanamaki was his town and the Osawa baths appear in the local record of his life, which the inn does not oversell.

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