Hakone
Madoka no Mori
強羅花扇 円かの杜
Katsushika Hokusai, “Kajikazawa in Kai Province (Kōshū Kajikazawa), from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei)” — The Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0
Madoka no Mori stands in forest at Gora, in Hakone. There are twenty rooms, all Japanese-Western in layout with two beds, and each has its own open-air hot spring bath fed straight from the source.
The inn draws on two springs of its own. The one piped to the guest room baths is an alkaline sodium chloride spring that leaves the ground at 91.1°C and is cooled with added water to 40–42°C. The communal bath house takes a different spring: sodium chloride, sulphate and bicarbonate, weakly alkaline, 63.1°C at source. That bath house sits apart from the guest wing, down a stairway into the trees, and the men's and women's sides each have an indoor bath and three open-air pools, open 15:00-24:00 and 5:00-10:00. The inn's Japanese FAQ states that tattoos are allowed there.
Dinner is Kyoto-style kaiseki, served either in your room, in seven of the suite and deluxe rooms, or in a private dining room, starting at 18:00, 18:30 or 19:00. The one restaurant on site is the counter kappo Kappo Mugen, where the Suien course is cooked over hydrogen; it starts at 18:30 for everyone at once, must be booked ahead, and is closed to children aged 12 and under. Children are otherwise accepted, with families placed in second-floor rooms.
Check-in is 15:00 to 18:00 and check-out 11:00, with no extension. Staff collect guests free from Gora or Sounzan station if you phone on arrival.
Why we chose it
Two springs rise on this one site, and the inn states that they differ in temperature, composition and feel. The room bath and the bath house down in the trees are therefore genuinely different waters, and you can move between them without leaving the grounds. The inn also answers two questions in Japanese that most do not: tattoos are permitted in the communal bath, and the in-room baths can be cooled with added water.
What it has
- Room with private hot spring bath
- Kaiseki dinner
- Tattoo-friendly
We may earn a commission when you book through links on this page.
Prices are indicative and change with dates and availability.
Sources
- Official site: hot springs and spring analysis (Japanese)
- Official site: FAQ, including tattoo, children and shuttle policies (Japanese)
- Official site: dining (Japanese)
- Official site: guest rooms (Japanese)
- Official site: access and shuttle times (Japanese)
- Rakuten Travel: facilities and basic information (Japanese)
- Hakone Tourist Association listing (Japanese)
- Hakone Ryokan and Hotel Cooperative listing (Japanese)