Kotohira Kadan
琴平花壇
Does Kotohira Kadan allow tattoos? In a private bath
Four hundred years of innkeeping on the slope of Mount Zozu, with two stone open-air baths that you book by the 45 minutes and a wing where the room comes with its own tub. The water is the town’s Chikoin spring, heated.
Nothing on this operator’s site addresses tattoos, so the shared bath Kissho-no-yu is an open question and we leave it that way. What the inn does publish is two reservable open-air onsen baths you take alone, Nagomi-yu on the third floor of the Shogetsu Terrace wing and Mori-no-yu on the second floor of Sansuikaku, each booked in 45-minute turns at the front desk on the day. Several room types in Fujimidai and Sansuikaku come with their own open-air tub, and guests in those rooms get one of the reservable baths free for a session. Day visitors cannot use either private bath; they are for people staying the night.
Where it is
Okayama STN
Tadotsu STN change to JR Dosan line · 13 min
JR Shiokaze limited express 49 min
Matsuyama STN
Hotel locationKotohira STN
JR All Shikoku Rail Pass Three to seven days, from 12,000 yen, on every JR Shikoku train, with non-reserved seats on the limited expresses. It starts at Kojima, the first stop on the Shikoku side of the line from Okayama, so Okayama to Kojima is a short separate fare. It covers the Shiokaze or Nanpu to Tadotsu or Kotohira and the Dosan line. 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 hot-spring page at kotohira-kadan.jp/hotspring lists both reservable baths with hours, prices and the room-guest allowance. Forty-five pages of the site were read and none of them mentions tattoos.
Read on: kotohira-kadan.jp/hotspring/
Best for: Booking a room with its own tub and still having a second private bath to reserve for 45 minutes
Nagomi-yu runs 15:00–23:00 with last entry at 22:00 and 6:00–10:00 with last entry at 9:00, at 3,300 yen for 45 minutes; free to guests in the detached rooms, Fujimidai and the Japanese-Western special rooms. Mori-no-yu, which opened in July 2019, runs 15:30–23:30 and 6:30–8:30 at 3,850 yen for 45 minutes and is free to Sansuikaku guests. Both have their own shower booth and a place to sit afterward. Rooms with a private open-air bath were added to Sansuikaku in 2019 and again in 2023. The source is the Chikoin spring, a weakly radioactive simple cold mineral water that has to be heated. Part of the Hotel New Awaji group.
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