Yuzawa, west of the station Ryokan ★★★☆☆

Otowaya Ryokan

音羽屋旅館

Does Otowaya Ryokan allow tattoos? In a private bath

Private bath only

Otowaya keeps a stone in its garden bath that the inn says grew a dragon pattern from the spring minerals, and two private baths, one plain hinoki and one Shigaraki ceramic.

Otowaya has no published tattoo rule. It rents two private baths by the 50 minutes, one of them a hinoki tub on free-flowing spring water, which is where a tattooed guest should plan to bathe.

Where it is

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.. Otowaya Ryokan · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · open in Google Maps

JR Tokyo Wide Pass Covers the Joetsu Shinkansen from Tokyo to Echigo-Yuzawa, and on to GALA Yuzawa in the ski season. 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 rather than a tattoo policy (hot-spring page)

Read on: otowaya-jp.com/hotspring/

Best for: A private hinoki bath on nothing but free-flowing spring water

Private baths: Iyashi-no-yu, hinoki, free-flowing onsen only; Gagaku-no-yu, a Shigaraki ceramic tub the inn describes in terms of radium and Bad Gastein ore rather than spring water. 50 minutes, 2,200 yen, reservations until 22:00. Also a private stone-bed sauna (ganbanyoku). Shared baths open 24 hours except cleaning; day bathing 1,200 yen.

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.

Others in the same group

More places in the Echigo-Yuzawa with private bath only

Nagomi no Oyado TakinoyuYuzawa, about seven minutes’ walk from the station’s west exit → Hotel FutabaYuzawa, on the rise above the town center → Shosenkaku KagetsuYuzawa, five minutes’ walk west of the station → Yukemuri no Yado YukinohanaYuzawa, three minutes’ walk from the station → Echigo no Oyado InamotoYuzawa, two minutes from the station’s west exit → Echigo-Yuzawa HATAGO IsenYuzawa, directly outside the station’s west exit →

All Echigo-Yuzawa listings →