Arima Grand Hotel

Arima Grand Hotel is a big hilltop hotel above the onsen town: over 200 rooms in three wings, a 400-space free car park, banquet halls and buffets. Rooms run from 20 sq m compact twins to North Wing rooms over 70 sq m. On the Bessho Yura club floors — gold spring on the 2nd, silver spring on the 7th — every room has its own hot spring open-air bath, meals in the room, a separate check-in desk and a lounge with free drinks.

Both of Arima’s waters run here. The gold spring is an iron-bearing sodium chloride strong salt spring; the silver spring is a simple radioactive (radon) water. Unkai, on the 9th floor, covers over 2,000 sq m and has an open-air bath of each, open 5:00–10:30 and 11:30–00:30. Yurari, two floors below ground, is gold spring only, 07:00–22:30. The Japan Spa Association records no free-flowing tubs here.

Five baths take reservations by phone or at check-in and are closed to day visitors: Akebono and Asahi (gold spring, 9th floor), the silver-spring spas Akane and Hatsune, and Yubae, which the hotel states plainly is not hot spring. From 2,200 yen for 45 minutes.

Dinner is a multi-course kaiseki — written 懐石 on the club floors, 会席 elsewhere — in the room or a private dining room. Check-in from 14:30, check-out 10:30. A free shuttle runs 08:00–21:00; the approach is steeply uphill. Tattoos are refused in the communal baths. Dogs sleep in their own annexe, not in guest rooms.