01
Kaya‑no‑ma
The corner room. Shoji the full width of the wall, and the ridge line right where you would put a painting.
02 / The water
Yumori spring · 42.4°C at source
The water was here first.
The spring rises three hundred metres behind the house and reaches the baths in about eleven minutes. Long enough to lose two degrees, not long enough to lose anything else. It is drawn straight from the source, never reheated, never recirculated, and never topped up with anything but itself.
- Simple alkalineSpring type
- pH 8.6At source
- 210 L / minYield
- Free-flowingNever reheated
- Yumori
- 42.4°
- The rotenburo, open to the valley. It holds twelve and has never held more than five. Go in the last hour of light.
- Hinoki
- 41.0°
- Indoor, cedar, rebuilt in 2019 from a single tree. One window, and it faces the moss.
- Kama
- 14.8°
- Straight off the stream, unheated and untouched. Ninety seconds is a long time in it.
It has come up at forty-two degrees every day since the house was built, and it will keep coming up at forty-two degrees long after. It does not know you are coming. Yumori · the rotenburo
The tub was cut from a single tree, and for fifteen years or so it will smell like that tree. After that it is simply a very good bath, which is no small thing. Hinoki · rebuilt in 2019
Nobody needs telling how long to stay in it. You come out when you come out, and then you go back to the hot one. That is the whole arrangement. Kama · fed straight off the stream
03 / The year
1,100 metres · three weeks behind the city
The blossom you arrived on lasts nine days.
Onodani sits at eleven hundred metres, so the valley runs about three weeks behind the city and everything here happens later than the calendar says it should. What follows is when things actually happen, which is the only version worth booking against.
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Spring
Late April to mid-May
The blossom opens around the twenty-eighth and is gone by the eighth. Nine days, most years. The water is warm and the air is not, which is the whole reason to be in it.
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Summer
June to August
The river runs loud enough to sleep through and the nights stay under twenty degrees. The one season in which the cold plunge makes obvious sense.
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Autumn
Mid-October to November
Maple the whole length of the east ridge. The busiest four weeks we have, and the only ones we ask you to book well ahead for.
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Winter
December to March
Snow to the eaves and the rotenburo steaming up through it. The road is cleared by seven each morning. Eleven rooms, and most nights fewer than eleven guests.
Rooms open twelve months ahead. The autumn weeks go first.
04 / The rooms
Eleven, none of them the same
No architect drew these rooms. The house did.
Eleven rooms in a building that has grown in every direction since 1904. One has its own cedar tub off the back, one is dark on purpose, one takes the whole ridge through a wall of shoji. There are no tiers here and nothing to upgrade to. Tell us what you would like to wake up to and we will put you in the right one.
02
Yamane
Darkest of the eleven, and the one people ask for twice. The futon is laid while you are at dinner.
03
Yumori‑no‑ma
Its own cedar tub off the back, fed from the same spring. You will not need the bath house, but go anyway.
From ¥46,000 per person · dinner and breakfast included
Open all year except the second week of March
05 / A day at Kaya
Five hours that matter
15:00
17:30
18:30
21:00
06:00
Tea and a hot towel in the entrance hall. Someone takes your bag, and you do not see it again until it is already in your room.
The rotenburo is best now, while the valley still has some colour left in it and the stone is warmer than the air.
One seating, one menu. Whatever the river and the hillside gave up this week, cooked by people who saw it arrive.
Lights go down along the corridor. The house starts making its own noises, and none of them are yours to deal with.
The water is hottest before anyone else is awake. Take the ladle, take the far end, and watch the mist come off the ridge.
Arrival Bath Table Quiet First light