Arima Sanso Goshobessho

Ten detached villas stand on a 1,400-tsubo (about 4,600 sq m) wooded site in the upper Kiyomizu part of Arima, on ground that held the temple Kiyomizu-dera and later the Kiyomizu Hotel, which took in foreign residents of Kobe’s treaty port. Each villa is 100 sq m — the Sanso type single-storey under a high ceiling, the Takigawa type a maisonette facing the river — and each has a thermal room, a low-temperature sauna held near body heat.

Water comes from two iron-bearing gold-spring sources, Gosho at 79.3°C and Neta at 97.3°C, mixed and piped free-flowing. All ten room baths run this gold spring rather than plain hot water, and guests fill them themselves. The detached bathhouse Tosen, sized to match Arima’s pre-Meiji baths, changes use through the day between men-only, women-only, mixed bathing in bathing wear, and private hire at 2,100 yen per person for 45 minutes; photography inside is not allowed. One villa, Corvo de Ouro, has an unroofed tree-house tub on the gold spring, which children may not use.

Dinner is the house’s sanka kaiseki, or mountain-village kaiseki: Tajimaguro Kobe beef, and fish the chef buys at the Akashiura midday auction. It is served at the window counter or in a private room; children get the same menu, shortened.

Check-in is 15:00, check-out 12:00. Telephone on reaching Arima Onsen station or the bus terminal and a car comes for you; the pickup cannot be booked ahead. The walk between the villas and the lobby building is outdoors.