Miyukiso Hanamusubi

Miyukiso Hanamusubi is a 29-room inn on high ground in Arima Onsen, Kobe, with a flower name on every room. Standard rooms fill floors three to five; the sixth is given over to rooms with their own open-air bath, the largest over 100 sq m. The building has no steps, and one room has a wheelchair ramp.

Arima has two waters and both reach the seventh-floor bathhouses, Hanagasumi and Hanagoyomi, which swap between men and women morning and evening. Hanagoyomi has one outdoor tub of gold spring — the iron- and salt-bearing water that runs reddish-brown — and two indoor tubs of gold and silver. None of the baths is free-flowing: the water is heated, topped up and recirculated. The sixth-floor rooms take gold spring round the clock and add a radium-ore foot slab. The FAQ says flatly that standard-room baths are not hot spring, while the room pages give one, Ezosumire, a gold-spring bath in the room; the two do not agree. Guests with tattoos are asked to keep out of the communal bathhouses.

Hanagokoro, the reservable open-air bath, is on the same floor, booked ahead by telephone: 45 minutes from the hour, 2,200 yen a head for house guests, two minimum.

Dinner is kaiseki, changed monthly, cooked course by course and served in the room; breakfast is downstairs at Michikusa. Check-in 15:00, check-out 10:00. Free pick-up from Arima Onsen station runs 09:00–20:00; telephone on arrival, as the station has nowhere to wait. Children are accepted; pets are not.