Kurokawa Onsen

photo by hiroooooki from Tokyo, Japan · CC BY 2.0

photo by 江戸村のとくぞう · CC BY-SA 4.0

One cedar disc is worth three baths out of twenty-five, and one of them can be spent on food or souvenirs.

You do not come here for a hotel: you buy a wooden pass, the 入湯手形, and spend the afternoon going from one bath to the next along the stream, in a bathrobe and wooden sandals. It is a disc of local cedar and is worth three open-air baths chosen from twenty-five inns; one of the three can be spent on food or a souvenir instead of water. The disc stays with you, and people take it home.

It is a hot spring town at the bottom of a gorge in the north of Aso, in the municipality of Minamioguni. In the eighties the inns decided to stop competing with each other over signs and to treat the town as a single hotel: no neon, facades of wood and plaster, and the baths open to people staying elsewhere too. That is where the shared pass comes from, and it is the object the place is known for all over Japan.

ℹ️ You can buy the pass at the inns or at the association's office, called 風の舎, and it is valid for six months from the day of purchase. It costs 1,500 yen for adults and 700 yen for children from three years old to the end of elementary school: ⚠️ the price comes from a 2024 article and a revision has reportedly been announced from 1 October, so check again before you set off. The day baths of the inns that accept the pass mostly open 8:30–21:00, last entry 20:30, but each has its own hours and at least one opens at 15:00. After the earthquake of 28 July 2026 the town is up and running: the 14 August 2026 update from one of the inns reports no damage to facilities or networks, and gives National Route 442 and the Yamanami Highway as passable, the Kyūshū Expressway open again since 8 August and the coach from Fukuoka running since 4 August with three services a day, a journey of about three hours. From Kumamoto you go up by way of Aso and Prefectural Road 339.

🚉 Kurokawa Onsen · 3 min walk

Sources: jalan.net · kumamoto.guide · welcomekyushu.jp · gekkoujyu.com

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