Iwamatsu Ryokan

The room is clean, the open-air bath is great, and there are not many people. Transportation is very convenient. From the second floor of Sendai Airport, you can take JR to Sendai Station, transfer to the Senzan Line, and get off at Sakunami Station. There is a special car from the store waiting at the platform, and you can go directly to the hotel. Dinner is a buffet and the food is rich. This shop also has a long history, and the open-air bath maintains mixed soup. However, there is also a special time for women, which saves some embarrassment.

The rock bath along the mountain stream is very atmospheric. The indoor bath is spacious, and the hot spring is wonderful. The building itself is old, but the corridors have been renovated. The buffet has a small number of dishes, but each dish seems to be carefully prepared. There was a bed in the room. It was a bit strange to see the bed casually placed on the tatami mats. I think it would have been better if there was a sauna. It was May, so the fresh greenery along the mountain stream was very refreshing.

The lobby and other areas are luxurious, reminiscent of a former high-class inn, and the hotel is a large, long-established inn with a gallery, kids' corner, hot springs, and a panel display of Nikka's history. I stayed in room 603 along the road. The Japanese-Western style room had a bed crammed into a 4.5 tatami mat room, and the amenities were average. The most troublesome thing was changing shoes to use the toilet. The open-air bath with natural hot spring water along the mountain stream was as wonderful as the reviews said, and I was very satisfied to be able to enjoy it in a private setting. The breakfast and dinner buffet meals were quite reasonable considering the price, and it was nice to see the local flavor of not only Miyagi but the whole of Tohoku.

You take the elevator to the lowest floor, then go all the way down the stairs to the open-air bath along the river, which was quite nice. After the bath, you're sweating again and it's a pain to have to climb back up, and the large bath with the washing area is on the floor above, which was inconvenient. Furthermore, the open-air bath on the lowest floor is basically mixed-gender, and there are times when it is only for women. The regular large bath is about what you'd expect. The buffet is in line with the price of the inn. Overall it was neither good nor bad.

Sakunami Onsen Kaiyu no Yado. I used the natural rock bath for a day trip. The bath fee is quite expensive at 1,870 yen, but it's worth it. There are four rock baths with different sources lined up along the river, and the atmosphere and the quality of the hot springs are simply wonderful.