Toyosato, beside O-yu at the center of the village Ryokan ★★★★☆

Ryokan Sakaya

旅館さかや

Does Ryokan Sakaya allow tattoos? In a private bath

Private bath only

One family has kept Sakaya beside O-yu for eighteen generations, and the spring that fills its baths rises on the inn’s own ground; the bath you book for yourself is the small indoor Matsu-no-yu.

Sakaya publishes no tattoo rule for its shared baths, in Japanese or in English, so do not plan on them. What it does have is Matsu-no-yu, an indoor family bath that guests reserve and use alone. The Kame-no-yu open-air spa on the same grounds is mixed and bathed in a swimsuit or a rented bathing wrap, and the inn says nothing about tattoos there either.

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.. Ryokan Sakaya · 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 bath page and the inn information page, Japanese and English)

Read on: ryokan-sakaya.co.jp/furo.html

Best for: Sleeping at the center of the village with a reservable family bath in the building

Private bath: Matsu-no-yu (松の湯), one indoor family bath, by reservation (“予約制”). No fee is published. Shared: the men’s Taka-no-yu and women’s Tsuki-no-yu, split into hot, warm and lying-down baths, with the Tsukimi-no-tani open-air baths, a sauna and a cold spring-water plunge. Kame-no-yu, by the inn’s Jon-nobi condo, is a mixed open-air spa worn with swimsuits or rented bathing wear. The spring rises on the inn’s own land. Eighteen generations of one family, by the inn’s count.

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