Oku-Dogo, up the Ishite river valley about ten minutes by car from the tram terminus Hotel ★★★★☆

Okudogo Ichiyunomori

奥道後 壱湯の守

Does Okudogo Ichiyunomori allow tattoos? In a private bath

Private bath only

Ten minutes up the Ishite valley the town stops and the canyon starts, and this hotel has five separate open-air tubs along it that you book one party at a time.

Nothing about tattoos appears anywhere on this hotel’s site, so the shared bath is an open question and we do not treat silence as a yes. What makes it worth booking is the other side of the building: five reservable open-air baths, each a separate stone, log or cypress tub filled with the Okudogo source and free-flowing, booked by the 45 minutes. Two of them are step-free.

Where it is

Matsuyama STN Iyotetsu tram, line 5 28 min Matsuyama Castle Dogo-Onsen STN 4.1 km out Hotel location
Matsuyama is 2 h 45 from Okayama on the Shiokaze limited express. Dogo is at the end of the Iyotetsu tram from the stop in front of JR Matsuyama station, about 25 minutes.. Okudogo Ichiyunomori · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · open in Google Maps

Dogo Onsen bathhouse ticket Admission to the Dogo Onsen bathhouse, bought ahead. Dogo Onsen Honkan is one of the three city bathhouses listed on this page. 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, not a tattoo policy. The hotel publishes no rule on tattoos for its shared baths.

Read on: okudogo.co.jp/spa/

Best for: A source-fed open-air tub of your own in a river canyon, booked by the three-quarter hour

The reservable baths run 15:00–23:00, last booking 22:00, and cost 4,400 yen for 45 minutes with towels, 1,100 yen for each extra half hour; bookings open a month ahead. The huge shared open-air bath, Suimei-no-yu, covers about 1,508 square meters with seven tubs a side; the spring is an alkaline simple sulfur water at pH 9.4, 38°C at source and warmed to 42°C, running at 400 liters a minute. Day visitors can use the shared bath 15:00–20:00 for 1,100 yen. A free shuttle runs from in front of Dogo Onsen Station for staying guests, by reservation.

Check availability

Booking through this button costs you nothing extra and sends a small commission our way — it’s what keeps this guide free for our tattoo community, and every policy on it checked. Thank you.

Others in the same group

More places in the Dogo Onsen with private bath only

All Dogo Onsen listings →