Maenohara Onsen Sayano Yudokoro
前野原温泉 さやの湯処
Does Maenohara Onsen Sayano Yudokoro allow tattoos? Yes, covered
You can bathe if the tattoo is completely hidden under a cover seal. The size the property allows is the thing to check before you book — allowances differ enough between chains to decide the matter.
Admitted if the tattoo is completely covered by no more than two of the facility’s own cover seals, 11×20 cm (4.3×7.9 in), sold at the desk for 310 yen each. Refusing to buy or wear them means being refused. In force since 25 February 2024; before that the bath refused tattoos outright.
Seal size allowed: 11×20 cm (4.3×7.9 in)
Show this at the front desk
当館指定のタトゥーカバーシール（11cm × 20cm／1枚310円）2枚までで完全に覆うことができる場合はご入館いただけることといたします。
The operator’s own wording, copied from the page named under “How we know” below. Holding up your phone settles the question faster than explaining it.
The bath
A real spring, and the facility is exact about which tub is the real thing. The source tub is fed straight from the well — no added water, no chemicals, heated only to hold its temperature — with a cloudy pale-green water the Japanese call uguisu-coloured, a sodium chloride strong-salt spring at pH 7.4 that leaves salt on the skin and keeps you warm after; the locals’ name for it is the heat bath. It is small and often busy, and the FAQ explains why: Tokyo allows the facility to pump only fifty tonnes a day. The open-air baths around it — pot baths, a lying bath, a garden of greenery to look up through — use the spring water diluted and filtered, and the indoor baths are well water: a high-concentration carbonated bath, jets, a lying bath, a sitting bath and a cold plunge. A tower-type dry sauna at 80–90°C, a steam sauna on the women’s side with a weekly herb, and a stone-bed sauna suite for a supplement.
Open every day from about 10:00 to 23:40, with one or two maintenance closures a year announced in advance. Admission is 970 yen on weekdays and 1,300 at weekends and holidays, plus 380 yen for a towel set if you bring none. A private half-open-air bath in the garden, Akari, is booked by the hour at 2,100 yen; no mixed bathing over age seven, by ward rule.
The hotel
Not a hotel: there are no rooms, and the rest rooms are for a nap, not a night. What there is instead is a 1946 house rebuilt as the restaurant Kakitensha, serving hundred-percent buckwheat soba over a dry garden of moss and stones, and a garden that the facility keeps for the four seasons.
What is good about it
- A source-fed tub inside Tokyo, small because the city caps the well at fifty tonnes a day.
- Two 11×20 cm seals at 310 yen each, bought at the desk, since February 2024.
- Eight minutes from the Mita line, 970 yen on a weekday.
Getting there
Eight minutes on foot from exit A2 of Shimura-sakaue STN on the Toei Mita subway line, which runs from Otemachi and Hibiya. Or a bus of about seven to ten minutes from Tokiwadai STN on the Tobu Tojo line or from the west exit of JR Akabane. There is no shuttle.
Shimura-sakaue STN · Toei Mita subway line
About 8 minutes from exit A2.
Buses from Tokiwadai STN (Tobu Tojo line) and JR Akabane, 7 to 10 minutes; no shuttle.
Where it is
Tokyo STN
Shinjuku STN
Shibuya STN
Ueno STN
Yamanote Line
↓ Haneda Airport 26 km
Narita Airport 56 km →
Location · Shimura-sakaue STN 8 min
What happens when you arrive
Cover the tattoo completely before you go in, with a seal that fits the size the property allows — that figure is in the policy line at the top of this page, and it is the property’s, not ours. Where the seals are sold at the front desk, buy them at check-in rather than at bath time; where they are not, bring your own. A seal that does not cover the whole tattoo counts as no seal, and staff are within their rules to turn you away at the door. Nothing needs declaring, but nothing may show.
How we know
Confirmed Confirmed from official site (FAQ and the notice of 2024-02-25)
Read on: sayanoyudokoro.co.jp/faq/ and the notice of 2024-02-25
The facility’s Chinese-language page still says tattooed and drunk guests are refused. The Japanese FAQ and the notice of 25 February 2024 are the current rule and are what is written here.
Best for: A real source-fed spring inside Tokyo, with a garden, soba and a seal rule that works
The rule is written for tourists with small pieces: two seals, bought on the spot. The facility’s Chinese-language page still carries the old refusal; the Japanese pages are the current ones.
Contact
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