Kurokawa, built up the slope over the village rooftops Ryokan

Ryokan Nanjoen

旅館 南城苑

Does Ryokan Nanjoen allow tattoos? In a private bath

Private bath only

Nanjoen climbs the hillside, so its three bath-rooms sit one above another and each one looks down on a different stretch of Kurokawa’s roofs.

Three of the twelve rooms have a semi-open-air bath of their own fed straight from the source, one each on the first, third and fourth floors, and those are the rooms to ask for by name. The inn publishes no tattoo rule for its shared baths, so the room bath is the reliable answer rather than the assumption that silence means permission.

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. Ryokan Nanjoen · 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 room page describes the three 源泉かけ流し温泉付客室 and where they sit in the building)

Read on: nanjoen.com/room

Best for: A room bath over the rooftops at a price below the private-bath ryokan up the valley

The three bath rooms sleep two to five and pair an eight-mat tatami room with a separate bedroom and a wide window seat cut from a single plank. Twelve rooms in five types overall. The association day-use board lists the inn at 600 yen and showed it closed for day bathing on the day checked, so treat the shared baths as a bonus rather than a plan.

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