Toyosato, a minute from the Kumanotearai-yu soto-yu Ryokan ★★★☆☆

Kawaichiya Ryokan

河一屋旅館

Does Kawaichiya Ryokan allow tattoos? In a private bath

Private bath only

Kawaichiya pipes Shin-yu, the spring the village calls five-colored because it shifts from milky to green, into seven of its guest rooms.

Kawaichiya is silent on tattoos in its shared baths. Seven of its rooms have an onsen bath of their own on the Shin-yu spring, two of them open-air, so booking one of those rooms is the whole answer.

Where it is

Tokyo STN Iiyama STN change to Nozawa Onsen Liner bus · 25 min Hokuriku Shinkansen 104 min Hotel location
Nozawa Onsen 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.. Kawaichiya Ryokan · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · open in Google Maps

JR East Pass Covers the Hokuriku Shinkansen from Tokyo to Iiyama. The Nozawa Onsen Liner bus up to the village is 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, not a tattoo policy (the English and Japanese room pages)

Read on: kawaichiya.jp/en/

Best for: Having milky Shin-yu water in your own room instead of walking to the soto-yu for it

Rooms with private onsen, per the English page: 302 (triple, open-air), 301 (twin, open-air), 310 (deluxe twin), 221, 222, 321 and 322 (twins). The Shinano-tei rooms were renewed between 2016 and December 2023. Shared bath Yuraku has an indoor bath on the Ogama (麻釜) source and an open-air bath on Shin-yu. From 15 December, winter bookings are taken only through the inn’s online system, not by phone.

Check availability

Booking through this button costs you nothing extra and sends a small commission our way — it’s what keeps this guide free for our tattoo community, and every policy on it checked. Thank you.

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