Sansuikan Kawayu Matsuya

Be sure to check which hotel you’ve booked. This is Sansuikan Kawayu Matsuya, while the sister hotel is Sansuikan Kawayu Midoriya, and the names are very similar. I suspect many of the good reviews for this place are from people who stayed at the sister hotel, since the outdoor onsen and buffet meals are available there. The sister hotel’s staff were very helpful. I stayed here because its rooms were full, and the lower price made access to the sister hotel’s great outdoor onsen worthwhile for me. But this hotel itself was grim: the rooms weren’t clean, there weren’t enough staff, and the whole place smelled of smoke. That tradeoff may not be worth it for everyone.

The beds were clean and the views were nice. We booked this place because nothing else was available, and it did the job for one night as a cheap option. You can use the onsen at the other hotel and book breakfast there for an extra charge. A lot of the glowing reviews seem to be about that other location, since the two hotels have similar names. This is the sister location, and it’s pretty grim, old, and worn down. If you have the money and another choice, I’d pick the other hotel or somewhere else, especially after a long day of hiking. x

The hotel next door had a really great river onsen, which we used, but I wouldn’t recommend staying here. It’s quite old and dingy, and our room didn’t feel clean, even though it didn’t smell of smoke. The only room available was a smoking room. It also wasn’t ready at check-in, so we waited around 45 minutes before we could get in.

The website still advertised hot springs in the river, but they’d stopped offering them a while ago. That felt like false advertising.