Kinosaki Onsen

Kinosaki Onsen is a 1,300-year-old hot-spring town in Toyooka, Hyogo Prefecture, whose nostalgic streets follow a willow-lined canal crossed by small stone bridges. It is best known for its seven public bathhouses (sotoyu), which guests traditionally visit in a robe.

The hot-spring water

All the bathhouses draw from the same source, classified as a sodium-calcium-chloride spring. This salty, mineral-rich water (close in composition to seawater) leaves the skin feeling moisturized and keeps bathers warm long after leaving; it is said to help with muscle pain, neuralgia and fatigue. The source runs hot, at roughly 42-44°C.

The seven public sotoyu baths

• Sato-no-yu - the largest and most modern, with a Roman-style bath and open-air baths
• Gosho-no-yu - grand exterior with a spacious open-air bath
• Mandara-yu - the most artistic interior
• Jizo-yu - the most traditional, fronted by stone Jizo statues
• Ichi-no-yu - features a cave bath cut into the rock
• Yanagi-yu - the most intimate, in a small historic building
• Ko-no-yu - the most rustic, tied to the legend of a wounded stork that healed its leg here

Yukata town-strolling culture

Visitors change into a yukata and wooden geta sandals to stroll between the bathhouses along the canal, hopping from one bath to the next. The whole town functions like a single ryokan, with the streets as its corridors and the seven sotoyu as its shared baths.