Bessho Onsen, a short walk from Kitamuki Kannon Ryokan ★★★★☆

Ryokan Nakamatsuya

旅館 中松屋

Does Ryokan Nakamatsuya allow tattoos? In a private bath

Private bath only

Tatami runs from the front door to every room at Nakamatsuya, a house that dates itself to the 1720s, and a handful of its rooms now have a spring-fed bath indoors.

No tattoo rule appears anywhere on Nakamatsuya’s site. Three room types come with a free-flowing hot spring bath indoors, and two private family baths on the ground floor cost staying guests 1,500 yen for 45 minutes, booked the same day at check-in. The seventh-floor view bath is shared.

Where it is

Tokyo STN Ueda STN change to Ueda Electric Railway · 27 min Hokuriku Shinkansen 85 min Hotel location
Bessho-Onsen STN
Everything here is reached from Tokyo. Karuizawa is an hour on the Hokuriku Shinkansen and Echigo-Yuzawa 79 minutes on the Joetsu Shinkansen, both with no change. Kawaguchiko is the Fuji Excursion from Shinjuku, about two hours, and Isawa the Kaiji, an hour and forty. The Nagano towns change once: Bessho at Ueda, Nozawa at Iiyama, and Yudanaka, Hakuba and Myoko at Nagano.. Ryokan Nakamatsuya · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · open in Google Maps

JR East Pass Covers the Hokuriku Shinkansen from Tokyo to Ueda. The Ueda Electric Railway on to Bessho is a private line and is paid separately; the JR Tokyo Wide Pass stops short of Ueda. Sold on Klook.

What happens when you arrive

Skip the shared baths and reserve the private one the way this page describes. Once the door is closed, the bath is yours.

How we know

Confirmed from official site, bath structure rather than a tattoo policy (the inn’s rooms page lists the hot spring rooms and its bath page prices the private baths)

Read on: nakamatuya.com/rooms/

Best for: A room with its own spring bath in an inn that makes a point of welcoming small children

Hot spring rooms: a 12-mat room with twin beds (one each on the 5th and 6th floors), a 16-mat room with semi-double twin beds, and Fukujuso, an old-farmhouse-style suite with a Japanese and a Western room. Private baths 15:00–24:00 for guests; day visitors can have one for 5,000 yen by phone, 15:00–20:00. The inn warns the family baths are reached by steep stairs with a handrail and have no grab bars inside. The whole building is floored in tatami. Free pick-up from Bessho-Onsen Station if you phone before boarding at Ueda. The inn dates itself to the Kyoho era (1716–1736).

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