Shiotsubo, Naka-Karuizawa, just north of the Hoshino area Hot spring hotel ★★★☆☆

Shiotsubo Onsen Hotel

塩壺温泉ホテル

Does Shiotsubo Onsen Hotel allow tattoos? In a private bath

Private bath only

The hotel repeats the legend that Minamoto no Yoritomo found this spring about 800 years ago, watching a crane heal a wound in it, and it keeps one family bath beside the large baths.

Shiotsubo publishes no tattoo rule. Its facilities page lists one family bath beside the men’s and women’s baths, and that is the bath to ask for. The site gives no hours, price or booking method for it, so ask when you reserve.

Where it is

Tokyo STN Hokuriku Shinkansen 1 h 06 Hotel location
Karuizawa 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.. Shiotsubo Onsen Hotel · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · open in Google Maps

JR Tokyo Wide Pass Covers the Hokuriku Shinkansen from Tokyo as far as Karuizawa and Sakudaira. The buses to hotels outside the center are paid separately. 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 hotel’s facilities page lists 家族風呂×1); the site is old and gives no detail on the family bath

Read on: siotubo.co.jp/shisetsu/shisetsu.html

Best for: An old hot spring hotel on a spring said to be 800 years old, if the family bath is free

43 rooms, all with their own bath and toilet. The Choumeisen spring is a clear sodium bicarbonate water; the large baths have an open-air bath and a lying-down bath, and are open through the night except 8:30–11:30. The operator tells the legend that Minamoto no Yoritomo found it by watching a wounded crane. The price list on the site is visibly years old; do not rely on it.

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