Tokachigawa Onsen Minami 14, on the river bank facing the Tokachi Ryokan ★★★★☆

Kangetsuen

十勝川温泉 観月苑

Does Kangetsuen allow tattoos? In a private bath

Private bath only

The fifth floor at Kangetsuen is all private tubs, cypress or pot-shaped or oval, set on terraces above the bend where the Tokachi River turns toward the Hidaka range.

The refusal here is blunt and it is printed in the day-use block of the hot spring page: tattooed visitors, gang members and drunks are firmly refused admission. It is worded as admission to the building rather than to the bath, so anyone booking a room should say up front that they have tattoos. What the hotel sells that answers the question is the top floor: four view suites and ten more rooms with an open-air moor-spring tub of their own, source-fed.

Show this at the front desk

※刺青・タトゥーをしている方、暴力団関係者、泥酔状態の方の入館は固くお断りいたします。

The operator’s own wording, to show at the desk if you need to.

Where it is

Sapporo STN Obihiro STN change to Tokachi Bus · 25 min JR Tokachi limited express 162 min Hakodate STN Asahikawa STN Kushiro STN Hotel location
Tokachigawa Onsen STN
Sapporo is the door to all of these. Asahikawa is 1 h 25 on the Kamui limited express, Obihiro 2 h 42 on the Tokachi and Kushiro 4 h 04 on the Ozora; buses carry on from there to Sounkyo, Asahidake, Tokachigawa, Lake Akan and Utoro. Closer in, Noboribetsu is about 1 h 45, Jozankei 56 minutes by coach, Toyako Onsen 2 h 20 and Niseko about 3 h 25. Kangetsuen · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · open in Google Maps

JR Hokkaido Rail Pass Five, seven or ten days of unlimited JR trains on the island, which covers the Tokachi and Ozora limited expresses from Sapporo to Obihiro. The Tokachi Bus out to Tokachigawa Onsen, 25 minutes, 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 (the refusal and the room baths both from /hotspring/ and /rooms/); the refusal is printed under the day-use heading and worded as refusing admission

Read on: kangetsuen.com/hotspring/

Best for: A river view from a private tub on the fifth floor, with the wide Tokachi running past below

The four top-floor view suites are named Suigetsu (wood-modern, Japanese-Western, 53 m²), Meigetsu (an oval pot tub, 56 m²), Fugetsu (a round pot tub, two tatami rooms, 56 m²) and Keigetsu (a cypress tub, 56 m²). Below them are seven 8-tatami rooms for two, three 10-tatami rooms for four and some Japanese-Western rooms, all with an open-air tub. The operator is specific about what is and is not spring water: the room open-air baths and the shared open-air bath are free-flowing spring, diluted because the source is hot, while the utaseyu, the walking bath and the lying bath in the big bath are ordinary tap water. Shared bath 13:00 to 01:00 and 04:00 to 09:00. Day use is 2,000 yen for adults and 700 yen for ages one through elementary.

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