Higashi-Oku-Kurokawa, upstream of the village where the spring water rises Ryokan

Genryu no Yado Hozantei

源流の宿 帆山亭

Does Genryu no Yado Hozantei allow tattoos? In a private bath

Private bath only

Hozantei sits where the Kurokawa water starts, eleven separate cottages strung along the stream, each with a bath on its own deck and a switch in the open-air bath that kills the lights so you can see the stars.

Eleven detached rooms, and the inn says every one of them has a hot spring bath of its own filled from the inn’s own source. That is the whole answer here: no tattoo rule is published, and a guest never has to get into shared water. Tengu-no-yu, the large open-air bath, is the shared one, and day visits to it need a telephone call first.

Where it is

Hakata Bus Terminal Kyushu Sanko coach 2 h 36 Kumamoto STN Kagoshima-Chuo STN Nagasaki STN Kagoshima Airport Hotel location
Kurokawa Onsen bus stop
Hakata to Ibusuki is about 3 h 25: the Kyushu Shinkansen to Kagoshima-Chuo, then the Ibusuki Makurazaki line down the coast, which the sightseeing train Ibusuki no Tamatebako also runs. Ureshino is about 1 h 20, a limited express to Takeo-Onsen and the Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansen one stop further. Kurokawa has no railway at all: the coach from Hakata takes about 2 h 40 by way of Hita and Tsuetate. Genryu no Yado Hozantei · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · open in Google Maps

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 bath page says the detached rooms have their own open-air baths, and its top page describes every room as having both an indoor and an open-air bath)

Read on: hozantei.com/spa/

Best for: Bathing alone at the top of the valley, well away from the day-trip crowd

One room, Sanbo-no-yu, has an indoor bath instead of an open-air one. Water is 100 percent from the inn’s own source, a simple sulfur spring. Guests use the big open-air bath 7:00–10:00 and 15:00–21:00; day visits are 11:00–15:00 and the inn asks you to phone ahead, and the association board listed it closed on the day checked, at 800 yen when open. Furthest from the village of any member inn, so allow for the drive.

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