Ohruri Sanso Nasu Kogen

We spent three nights and four days here with my 87-year-old grandmother, who has back pain. We let the hotel know beforehand, and they kindly chose a room that was easy for her to get around in. She had a wonderful time and made great memories, including enjoying her first mixed-gender bath and nighttime hot spring pool while wearing a rash guard. The hotel was clean, and both the hotel and cleaning staff were very kind. Thank you. We’ll visit again!

I booked a room-only overnight stay before climbing Mount Nasu, including Mt. Asahi, Mt. Sanbonyari, and Mt. Chausu. The rate was incredibly reasonable, which helped a lot. I didn’t use the mixed-gender outdoor bath or pool since I was there to climb, but the indoor bath was very spacious and relaxing. From my room, I could see all the way out to town, which felt wonderfully open.

The hot spring area is in a clean, new building, and jazz playing in the indoor bath made it a relaxing place to unwind. The outdoor pool uses water directly from the spring, so it was slightly cloudy and had a sulfur smell, which I really liked. The indoor bath recirculates heated water, but it still smells of sulfur and feels like a hot spring. The building itself is clean, and coffee, table tennis, and billiards are free to enjoy. There are no baths in the rooms, which may be an issue for women. If food is your main priority, this may not be the place for you, but I thought it was very good value.

Kame no I Hotel is a relaxed, unconventional place, and I’d happily stay again. It suited us as a family looking for a trip without the expense of a traditional inn with kaiseki, and we were tired of buffet meals. Since you bring your own food or buy it in the shop, you can eat when you like and spend time together without sticking to a schedule. The frozen bento cost 1000 yen, which seemed steep, but it looked like a convenience-store meal and tasted surprisingly good for the price. The self-serve mitarashi dango were 300 yen and quite sweet. The hotel is tucked away at the end of a narrow mountain road, so I wouldn’t suggest driving out for dinner at night. The outdoor pool is about as deep as an outdoor bath, has lots of sulfur mineral deposits, and comes with inner tubes and whale shark floats that kids will love. The spring water is genuinely free-flowing, though quite lukewarm and cold. It felt unheated and otherwise unaltered, and the overflow runs away like a stream, which hot spring fans will love. There’s a torii gate behind the pool, and the spring water flows from there, so I think that’s where it comes from. To get there, change into a swimsuit in the main bath’s changing room, take your locker key, then go through a door about five meters away. There’s a manual swimsuit wringer in the main bath washing area. By the way, the TeraCharge EV charger is apparently broken.