Villa Yaita Onsen Hot Spa

The roadside station is five minutes away by car, the supermarket about seven, and there’s a restaurant next door, so getting food was no problem. The weekend-only pork miso soup is delicious. The other dishes are microwaved, but still taste good when you eat there. Free breakfast bread is a nice extra. We booked a Japanese-Western style room for 6,000 yen per person. It had a roomy living area, a Western-style room and a Japanese-style one, plus dishes, a rice cooker, a kettle, and even karaoke. It felt just like home, was comfortable, and the hot-spring bath was wonderful. There are bugs around, as you’d expect in the mountains. The gas stove shuts off with a safety alarm after two hours, so keep switching it on and off or you’ll have to go outside to reset the switch. The place is reasonably priced, and I could relax in the hot springs. There’s glamping too, but I find this local place more relaxing. I hope they take good care of facilities like this. Thank you to the owner for making the abundant hot springs available for everyone in the community without discrimination. I’d like to stay again.

For the price, it’s a good deal: the room bath uses hot-spring water, and I could use Makoto no Yu as much as I liked. I stayed in the business-class Tsutsuji. The complimentary breakfast bread and soft-boiled eggs were tasty. The room was unpleasantly unclean, though. There were dead stink bugs by the window, dust all over the exhaust fan, items left in the fridge, and G-traps sitting in plain sight as well as inside. There seemed to be Wi-Fi, but even after asking reception for the password, I couldn’t find it. The au signal was weak.

We’ve stayed here three times since discovering it. The detached, mountain lodge-style accommodation seemed like a good way to prevent infection. If you don’t mind cooking, the rooms have the necessary utensils, so you can bring ingredients and seasonings and make a proper meal. You can also just heat food in the microwave. Ask at the front desk in advance for breakfast, and before 8:00 AM they’ll bring toast, coffee, a hot-spring egg, and yogurt to your room. The egg is pretty good and is also available at Makotoan. There’s a bath in each room, supplied directly with water from Makoto no Yu. You can set it to your preferred temperature. We like hot baths, so we let the water cool rather than adding any. Straight from the source, it’s a colorless, tasteless sodium-calcium chloride sulfate spring, and it comes out of the tap above 60°C, so watch out for burns. Personally, I think it helps with lower back pain, tendonitis, and neuralgia. My wife is going through chemotherapy and says it eases the numbness in her hands and feet, a side effect of the treatment. The facilities are almost perfect, but none of the lodges has Wi-Fi. You have to go to Makoto no Yu Honkan or the front desk to connect. If you’re in a lodge near the desk, it might reach your room. Weekdays are cheaper. It costs an extra 1,000 yen on Fridays and the day before a holiday. The location also works well as a base for hiking in Happogahara and Kogenyama.

I was here overnight before work. The room reminded me of a studio apartment from the early Heisei era. Wi-Fi was fast, and the free breakfast tasted good.