Tattoo friendly onsen in Jozankei

Chalet Ivy Jozankei

シャレーアイビー定山渓

Chalet Ivy is the one operator in Jozankei that answers the question with a yes rather than a no. Its own Japanese FAQ says a tattoo that a single small seal can cover is fine in the shared baths, and that the seals are sold at the front desk. Anything larger than one seal, the hotel says, is for the hot spring bath in your room, which every room here has.

タトゥー・入れ墨がある場合も、大浴場には入れますか。 小さなシール1枚で隠れる大きさであればシールをご利用いただいたうえでお楽しみいただけます。フロントで販売しております。 シールのサイズを超える場合は、お部屋の温泉をお楽しみいただいております。

Best for: Buying a cover seal at the desk and getting into the shared bath the same afternoon

One seal is the limit the hotel sets, and it sells them. The shared bath is indoor plus outdoor with a sauna and no cold plunge, and the operator says the open-air bath is fenced for privacy so there is no view from it. Day use is not sold: the bath is for staying guests. The same company’s Niseko houses, Chalet Ivy Hirafu and Weiss Hanazono, answer the same question with a flat yes and no seal at all, so a tattooed traveler moving between the two sees the policy change.

Jozankei Daiichi Hotel Suizantei

定山渓第一寶亭留 翠山亭

Suizantei publishes no tattoo rule anywhere on its site, so nothing here says the two shared baths are open to you. What it does publish is a building where you never have to ask: every one of the sixteen room types has its own hot spring bath, and on top of that there are two baths you book for yourself, the rooftop Myotai-no-yu and the detached Morino-yu.

Best for: A hotel where the room bath is the standard fitting rather than the expensive exception

Room types run from a 45 sq m room with a view bath to a 160 sq m room with a hot spring and a sleeping bath. Myotai-no-yu is the top-floor reservable open-air bath, booked at check-in, with no shower or washing area. Morino-yu is a detached bath house with an indoor and an outdoor tub, deliberately dim and without amenities; 60 minutes costs 4,400 yen and it is also sold to day visitors from 12:00 to 14:00. A reservable sauna, Suizan Neppa, takes day bookings too. The hotel takes guests of elementary-school age and up only.

Suizantei Club Jozankei

翠山亭倶楽部定山渓

Seven rooms, and the inn says all seven have hot spring water in them. The tub has a valve straight off the source, so it fills with water that has been neither heated nor diluted. No tattoo rule is published for the shared marble and soft-stone baths, and nothing here should be read as permission to use them.

全ての客室で温泉をお楽しみいただけます。

Best for: Filling your own tub from a source valve whenever the mood takes you

Room types range from a 56 sq m room with a hinoki indoor bath to a 110 sq m suite with a hot spring bath and a private sauna. Four floors, each named for a season, rooms named for Japanese sweets. Guests can also use the large baths at the other Daiichi Hotel houses in town under the group’s Premium Access scheme, and those baths publish no tattoo rule either.

Suigan

翠巌

Suigan has removed the question from its building. The inn states plainly that there is no large bath here at all — “ここには、大浴場はございません” — and that every one of its seven suites has been given its own hot spring, each built differently in wood or stone. There is no shared water to be turned away from.

ここには、大浴場はございません。 あるのは、ひとつひとつ違う、あなただけの湯。

Best for: A stay with no communal bath in the building to negotiate at all

Seven suites in the main house, each with a different bath; a separate annex, Matsunao Ibarimagari, is run alongside it. Guests can also use the large baths at other Daiichi Hotel houses through the group’s Premium Access scheme, and those baths publish no tattoo rule, so the room bath is the part you can count on.

Kuriya Suizan

厨翠山

Five of the six room types here come with their own bath, from a 62 sq m room with an open-air tub up to a 115 sq m room with a hinoki open-air bath; only the plain 36 sq m Japanese room has none. Guests can also book Morino-yu, the group’s detached private bath house, for 4,400 yen an hour, or the reservable sauna. No tattoo rule is published for the shared river baths.

Best for: A cooking-led inn where the private bath house can be booked by the hour

Book the 62 sq m open-air-bath room or larger; the 36 sq m Japanese room has no bath of its own. The inn takes guests aged 13 and over. It also gives guests free entry to Kyujitsu-yu in the Kyujitsu Building, but that bath house refuses admission to anyone with a tattoo, seals and paint included, so it is not a way in.

Kasho Gyoen

奥定山渓温泉 佳松御苑

All twenty-three rooms are suites and all twenty-three have a forest-facing hot spring bath, which the inn states outright: “客室は全23室。そのすべてが「森の展望風呂」を備える「和スイートルーム」。” The water is Usubetsu, a calcium-sodium bicarbonate spring, different from the Jozankei source down the valley. No tattoo rule is published, and none is needed to bathe in your own room.

客室は全23室。 そのすべてが 「森の展望風呂」を備える 「和スイートルーム」。

Best for: A different spring from the rest of the valley, taken alone with the forest in the window

Rooms are 53 or 58 sq m with a separate living room and bedroom; one universal-design room, three with balconies and four connecting rooms. Inside Shikotsu-Toya National Park on roughly 3,000 tsubo of grounds. The spring is bicarbonate rather than the sodium chloride water of Jozankei proper.

Grand Blissen Hotel Jozankei

グランドブリッセンホテル定山渓

The hotel sells its rooms under the heading 渓谷の温泉客室, gorge hot spring rooms, and the room list is almost all of them: twin, luxury, Japanese-Western and universal rooms all carry a 温泉展望風呂, a hot spring view bath, with a plain standard twin as the exception. The hotel publishes no tattoo rule for its shared bath and sauna, so book a room bath rather than counting on the big one.

Best for: A view bath on your own floor without moving up to ryokan money

Opened July 2021. Four room types carry the hot spring view bath: twin at 42 sq m, luxury at 50, Japanese-Western at 50 and a universal room at 53, all on the gorge side across floors 2 to 6, with a view floor of the same three types on 7. The one exception is the Standard Twin on the second floor, which has no hot spring bath, so check the room type at the booking screen. Day visitors are sold a bath, meal and treatment set at 8,900 yen rather than a plain entry ticket.

Jozankei Yurakusoan

定山渓 ゆらく草庵

Kyoritsu Resort states on the house’s own page that every room has a natural hot spring bath — “全室天然温泉客室風呂付き” — and lists a reservable open-air bath alongside the large bath. Between the two, nothing here depends on being allowed into shared water. No tattoo rule is published for the large bath.

全室天然温泉客室風呂付き。

Best for: Booking the reservable open-air bath and still having a tub in the room

Run by Kyoritsu Resort, the Dormy group’s ryokan arm. Reachable on the Jotetsu bus from Sapporo Station in about 1 h 10, or in about 55 minutes on the reservation-only Kappa Liner to Hoheikyo Onsen, getting off at Jozankei Jinja-mae.

Yukyu no Yado Shiraito

悠久の宿 白糸

A small inn that rents out its open-air bath. Its own onsen page sets aside two slots a night, 16:00 to 16:50 and 21:10 to 22:00, two parties in each, first come first served, at 2,500 yen for 50 minutes; outside those hours the bath goes back to being men’s and women’s. No tattoo rule is published for the shared baths, so the booked slot is the reliable way in.

※①16:00～16：50 ②21：10～22：00 は貸し切り利用ができます。各時間2組 先着予約制 （宿泊のお客様～1組料金2,500円/各50分）

Best for: Renting a free-flowing open-air bath for fifty minutes for the price of a set lunch

Free-flowing sulfur-sodium-chloride water at 60 to 80°C, piped from the holding tank straight into the tub with no recirculation. The open-air bath is in a separate building from the large bath, which is open to staying guests around the clock. Only four private slots exist each night, so ask when you check in.

Jozankei Onsen Hanamomiji

定山渓温泉 花もみじ

Hanamomiji keeps three baths you can book for yourself: Ten-no-yu on the twelfth floor, which opens onto a half-open-air terrace, the Shigaraki ceramic tub Maru-yu, and the hinoki Kaku-yu. Sessions run 60 minutes at 2,200 yen and can be booked ahead or on the day. Its sister bath next door, Shika-no-yu, states in both Japanese and English that people with tattoos are not allowed in, and Hanamomiji says nothing either way about its own two large baths.

当館では刺青(入れ墨)、タトゥーをされている方のご入浴をお断りしております。

Best for: A top-floor private tub you can open to the air, booked by the hour

Three private baths: Ten-no-yu on 12F sleeps five and its door opens for a half-open-air bath, Maru-yu on 2F is Shigaraki ware and takes three, Kaku-yu on 2F is hinoki and takes five. Sessions start between 15:00 and 21:00. The quoted refusal is posted on the Shika-no-yu bath page, which is the adjoining bath Hanamomiji guests are invited to use, so treat the shared baths as closed and book a private slot.

Nukumori no Yado Furukawa

ぬくもりの宿 ふる川

Furukawa publishes no tattoo rule for its three-floor bath building, and silence is not permission. It does publish a reservable bath: 2,200 yen for 50 minutes for the room, on the fifth and sixth floors, from noon to midnight and again from six to ten in the morning. Two of its dog-friendly rooms, 302 and 303, also come with hot spring water in the room.

ご料金 1室 2,200円（50分） 5階・6階／昼12:00～深夜0:00・午前6:00～午前10:00

Best for: A reservable bath available from noon, including the morning after

The private bath opens at noon and runs to midnight, then again 06:00–10:00, so it can be used on a check-out morning. Separately, Oku-no-yu “Yu-meimi” is a 500 yen meditation bath in the basement with a steam room fed by 80°C spring vapor; children are asked not to use it. Rooms 302 and 303 are dog-friendly rooms with hot spring water in them.

Jozankei Manseikaku Hotel Milione

定山渓万世閣ホテルミリオーネ

Milione’s refusal is unusually wide and it repeats it in four languages: tattoos, fake tattoo seals and body paint all bar you from entering the bath area, not merely from bathing. Cover-up seals are named as a problem rather than a solution. The way in is a room with its own bath: the hotel sells a 100 sq m Japanese-Western special room with a hot spring view bath, and two special rooms with a view sauna.

※泥酔されている方、入れ墨（刺青）やタトゥー、疑似シール、ペインティング等をされている方のご入場・ご入浴はお断りしています。

Best for: A room with its own hot spring view bath in a hotel whose big bath is closed to you

Book room 1303, the 100 sq m hot spring view bath room, or the sauna rooms 1302 and 1304; the standard rooms have no bath of their own and the shared bath is not an option. The English page puts it as: “Those who are very drunk or who have tattoos, temporary tattoos, body paintings or similar may not enter the facilities or take a bath.” Day-use bathing at 1,500 yen is sold to the public but on the same terms.

Shogetsu Grand Hotel

章月グランドホテル

Two room types have hot spring water in them and the hotel names them in its own FAQ: “801スイ－トル－ムとプレミアムル－ムのみ展望風呂温泉が室内にございます。” Everything else shares the large bath, for which no tattoo rule is published. Book suite 801 or a Premium room and the question does not arise.

温泉付きの部屋はありますか？ 801スイ－トル－ムとプレミアムル－ムのみ展望風呂温泉が室内にございます。

Best for: One named suite with the hot spring in it, in a 1934 house that does not sell day baths

Only suite 801 and the Premium rooms have the in-room hot spring bath; the rest do not. Founded 1934, part of the Noguchi Kanko group, with kaiseki dinner and a set Japanese breakfast in the dining rooms rather than a buffet. The hotel states it does not accept day-use bathing at all, so the shared bath is for guests only.