Onsen towns within reach of Kyoto and Osaka

Kinosaki: a town you bathe in

Kinosaki Onsen is about 2 hours 30 minutes from Kyoto by limited express, and 2 hours 40 minutes from Osaka. It is a small riverside town where guests walk between the public baths in yukata and geta, and the inns hand out a pass: at Nishimuraya Honkan it covers all the town's baths, on top of the inn's own three.

Nishimuraya fills its room baths with heated plain water, not onsen, under a Kinosaki rule that protects the town's springs, so its open-air room baths do not count as a private onsen; our guide to private onsen explains the difference. The ryokan association's free bus meets certain limited express trains at the station, if you send your arrival time ahead.

Kinosaki is the classic choice; the Hokuriku coast to the north-east has more of it.

Nishimuraya Honkan

Nishimuraya Honkan

Kaga: Yamashiro and Yamanaka

Kaga-Onsen station is on the Hokuriku Shinkansen. From Kyoto or Osaka, take the Thunderbird to Tsuruga and change to the Shinkansen: about two hours in all. From Tokyo it is about three hours direct.

Yamashiro is the town with the old spring. Araya Totoan, kept by one family for eighteen generations, stands on Yamashiro's original source, a minute's walk from the restored Meiji bathhouse; 11 of its 17 rooms have their own free-flowing bath. Beniya Mukayu, on Yakushiyama hill above the town, gives every room an open-air cypress bath facing a forest garden. Both send a free shuttle from the station.

Yamanaka lies further into the hills, along a gorge, 20 minutes by taxi from the station. The Kayotei has ten rooms on about 33,000 square metres of its own forest; only some have a hot-spring bath, so ask for the room.

One stop sooner on the same line is Awara.

Araya Totoan

Beniya Mukayu

The Kayotei

Awara and Eiheiji, in Fukui

Awara-Onsen station is the stop before Kaga-Onsen, on the same Thunderbird and Shinkansen route from Kyoto. Kofuyuden Beniya, founded in 1884 and rebuilt to Tetsuo Kobori's design after a fire, draws on four wells of its own in the garden: every room has a partly open-air bath of free-flowing spring water. Its shuttle meets guests at the station, booked by the day before.

Inland from Fukui, the Echizen Railway reaches Eiheijiguchi in about 25 minutes, on the way to the Zen temple of Eiheiji. Kanshukuen Eshikoto's eight villas stand beside ESHIKOTO, the sake complex of the Kokuryu brewery's parent company, on the Kuzuryu river, each with a semi-open-air bath of the local spring; it is a cold mineral spring, so the water is heated.

Kofuyuden Beniya

Kanshukuen Eshikoto

Nearer: Kyoto, Nara and Ise-Shima

For a hot-spring bath without the long train, a few inns closer in fill their baths with spring water. Fufu Kyoto, by Nanzen-ji, has a hinoki bath in every room filled with water from Nose Art Lake Onsen, north of Osaka. Fufu Nara, in Nara Park, gives every suite an open-air hot-spring bath; Kintetsu Nara is about 35 minutes from Kyoto by limited express, then five minutes by taxi.

Further, The Hiramatsu Kashikojima on Ago Bay is about 160 minutes from Osaka Namba by Kintetsu limited express. Only its four annex rooms have a hot-spring bath, but guests in both buildings take turns in its private open-air bath over the bay.

Arima, behind Mount Rokko in Kobe, is the old onsen town nearest Osaka, and the other famous name in the Kansai. There is no inn there on our list yet.

Fufu Nara

The Hiramatsu Kashikojima

Our inns, town by town

Kinosaki and Kaga are two hours or more each way, so the inns are for a night: check-in from 15:00, dinner at a set hour and a bath again in the morning. Here is each one on our list, by town.