Japan Honeymoon: Kinosaki Onsen 2-day Itinerary
Welcome back to part 3 of my Japan Honeymoon series, where I write about everything we did, what we ate, and where we stayed during our 3 week trip to Japan.
We just spent 3 days in Tokyo and another 2 days in Osaka – read my other recaps for everything we did in those cities.
We are now on Day 6 of my trip where area heading off to one of our favourite places in the world… Kinosaki Onsen Town 🩷!
Kinosaki Onsen Town is roughly 2.5 hrs away from Kyoto via the bullet train. Famous for its 7 tattoo friendly natural hot spring baths, Kinosaki Onsen is a classic Japanese town steeped in 1,300 years of culture and tradition.
This place was first introduced to us by a local Japanese friend of my sister’s. My sister also visited Kinosaki and had a great time. We feel like the only people who know about Kinosaki are actual Japanese folks who are looking for a hot spring experience. This makes Kinosaki less crowded and provides a relaxing and authentic travel experience.
This will be the second time I am visiting Kinosaki Onsen Town and here is where we stayed and what we did during our time here!
Japan Honeymoon trip 2024 recap
Tokyo | Osaka | Kinosaki
Day 6: Arrival to Kinosaki Onsen Town
Today we are checking out of our hotel in Osaka and traveling to Kinosaki Onsen Town in the Toyooka region of Japan.
Brunch: Kuromon Ichiba Market
Kuromon Market is one of those traditional Japanese public markets with around 150 different shops and food stalls. The market is fully under cover and it’s so fun to walk around and eat at different stalls.
We arrived at 9am so not all the food stalls were open yet, but it wasn’t crowded and the market was only an 8 minute walk from our hotel.
Some of the things we tried with prices and what we would recommend:
- Strawberry daifuku ($4) – must get 🍓! I prefer the red bean paste over the custard
- Dango ($1) – was just ok
- Bluefin tuna sashimi trio ($25) – amazing 🤤! We walked around and assessed a lot of different fish stalls before we decided on this stall. We felt it had the best quality, a thicker cut and a reasonable price.
- Creamy raw oyster ($10 medium size) – maybe not the most appetizing for breakfast but we didn’t get diarrhea!
- Sweet potato chips ($6) – I got a sample of this and it was so good but I didn’t think it was worth $6 for a cup
- Pickled cucumbers ($3) – This was a lot of veggies in a cup! They had a bit of spice to it – definitely share with another person
- Strawberry smoothie ($5) – refreshing
- Grilled fish skewer ($5) – was just ok
- Kobe beef croquette ($4) – total scam 😡! Barely any beef in here
Transportation: Bullet train to Kinosaki
We took the bullet train from Osaka Station to JR Kinosaki Onsen Station. There are limited express trains to Kinosaki and all limited express trains do require seat reservations in advance. Tickets costed us around $50-60 CAD per person (one way).
Before boarding our train, we stopped by one of these bento stalls to pick a boxed lunch to eat on the train. To be honest, most of them did not look that appetizing but we settled on the eel one and bought a bunch of snacks from a convenience store before boarding.
The train took 2 hr and 44 mins and it was a very beautiful and scenic route filled with mountains and rivers – looks like something out of a summer anime in the rural areas 😍!
Once you arrive at Kinosaki Onsen Station, there are staff who will immediately help and guide you. Since we are staying at one of the main ryokans in Kinosaki, there is a free bus shuttle that will take you and your luggage straight to your hotel. I highly recommend you book one of Kinosaki’s registered ryokans so you can enjoy all the same benefits that we had in this blog post.
Accommodations: Tsutaya Inn
The accommodation we are staying at for our first night in Kinosaki is a ryokan called Tsutaya Inn. A ryokan is a traditional Japanese hotel with the tatami mat flooring and futons. The last time we were in Kinosaki, we also stayed at Tsutaya Inn and we loved it so we wanted to stay here again. Also as a side note, the staff’s English here is perfect. It was very meaningful to come back as a married couple since we were only dating the last time we stayed 🥰!
Each room can fit 2-4 people and has a lot of free amenities, including a hot spring bath in the building (although it is quite small). As a side note, these rooms only have sinks and a toilet and you will not find a shower or bathtub in your room. Guests are encouraged to use the 7 public bath houses around the town that is connected to hot spring waters.
The reason I recommend you to stay at a ryokan aside from it being a really cool experience, is that if you stay at a ryokan in Kinosaki (they have a list of preferred ones), you get a free onsen pass that lets you use all of the town’s public bath houses for free. The pass lasts until the next day also so you kind of get 1.5 days to enjoy the onsens before you leave.
The price of 1 night stay at Tsutaya Inn for us in September $384 for 2 people. This includes the free onsen pass, 2x Kaiseki dinner and 2x breakfast. We think this is an amazing price for a luxurious and relaxing experience 👍!
Explore: Kinosaki Onsen Town
Almost all of the ryokans provide a yukata for you to wear so it’s fun to put it on right away and wear their provided sandals and clip clop around town.
We stopped by a tempura fishball stall for a quick snack and took some photos by the main river of the town – so pretty!
We also enjoyed a foot bath that we stumbled upon (my feet have been dying from walking 30k+ steps a day).
There are a lot of cute gift and souvenir shops around town to check out also! We found a convenience store and bought some snacks and plum wine to enjoy later tonight.
Activity: Enjoy the hot springs
There are 7 public onsens for you to try in Kinosaki so you better get on it if you want to visit more than 2!
After walking around town, we dropped off our purchased items at our ryokan and then walked to the nearest onsen to soak before our dinner. The closest one was Kono-yu. This bath is supposed to bring us happiness in our marriage and longevity and is the oldest bathhouse building in Kinosaki.
All of the onsens in Kinosaki are tattoo friendly so you don’t need to have any sort of cover up or come at weird hours and wonder if you’ll bump into a yakuza member. However, all of the public bath houses are still separated by gender so my husband and I did have to separate in order to use the baths. The rules/etiquette of onsens are explained in English around all of the bath houses so you won’t be confused.
Dinner: Kaiseki dinner at Tsutaya Inn
The best part about staying at a ryokan is of course the dinner that comes with it!
Kaiseki is like a multi-course chef’s tasting menu. There are a bunch of appetizers and usually some sort of main meat and fish course. Since Kinosaki is close to Kami Town (crab town 🦀), they also get a lot of fresh snow crab so I was happy to see it as one of the courses!
We were so full from our meal and it was delicious! One of my favourite courses aside from the sashimi was the fried fish!
Unlike our last stay where the dinner was set up in the privacy of our own rooms, they now moved dining service to their dining room. But they do have some privacy screens set up between each table and everyone was quiet and not too loud.
Activity: Enjoy the hot springs… again!
For our second soak of the day, we visited Ichino-yu. The cool thing about this bath house is that inside there’s a cave made of natural boulders! Really cool to soak and relax in there.
Afterwards, some man (I don’t know if he works for the town) helped us take lots of photos by the river and night and even posed us!
Good night!
After dinner service, the staff at the ryokan move the table and chairs in the main room aside and set up the futons. We had a lot of fun eating our snacks and drinking some plum wine after our night time soak and we just relaxed before sleeping on the futons.
I will say it is harder than a bed, but I do prefer a harder/stiffer mattress and I had a comfortable sleep.
Day 7: Kinosaki Onsen Town
Today we have a full day of exploring the rustic and charming Kinosaki Onsen Town. We also get to experience one of the oldest and most expensive ryokans in town!
Breakfast: Tsutaya Inn
Our stay at Tsutaya Inn includes a traditional Japanese breakfast. Unfortunately for us, it has to start at around 8am (we like to sleep in).
We were able to get up and crawl to the dining room for the breakfast, which include some really comforting items like a fluffy egg omelette, grilled fish, tofu, soup and veggies.
Activity: Morning soak
Your free onsen pass technically lasts until 3pm the next day so after breakfast, we hurried to check out another bath house for a morning soak. This time we went to Goshonoyu Bath, and this ended up being one of our favourite bath houses because the outdoor bath has a view of a small waterfall! It was so relaxing to listen to the sound of the waterfall. Plus, it was nice to have something to look at while everyone around you is naked.
After our morning soak, we went back to our ryokan to pack and check-out. The staff were very sweet and said goodbye to us at the entrance. We were only moving to the ryokan across the street. They took care of our luggage and sent it to the ryokan next door and we were free to roam until check-in at our next hotel.
Activity: Kinosaki Onsen Ropeway
Starting the morning off with something touristy, we decided to check out the view of town from the top of the Kinosaki Onsen Ropeway. The view from Mount Daishi was actually awarded one star in the Michelin Green Guide Japan 🌱.
It costed around $10 CAD for a roundtrip adult and you take a small cable car up the mountain. There is a mid-stop where you can check out a small temple and you can even do a 20 minute hike. We opted to just go straight to the top since we didn’t pack any hiking clothing or shoes.
At the top, it’s mostly just a view with a coffee shop so we ordered a matcha latte to share. The view is really beautiful and the air felt really clear. It was also interesting to see some parts of the town that made it feel more like a town – for example, the school with a group of students outside doing P.E. class.
Activity: Rent a bicycle + Visit Genbudo Park
We decided to rent bicycles and explore more of the town. We rented our standard bicycles from the Tourism Center right across from the bus station. We paid a rental fee of $8CAD for 2 hours per bicycle but they also had electric bicycles also. Belatedly, we realized when we checked into our second ryokan that they included free bicycle rentals! Oh well, $8 isn’t expensive anyways.
We didn’t rent a helmet because it was really hot and we felt comfortable riding without one since this is a small town. We were given a map and we chose to cycle 20 mins one way to Genbudo Park to look at rocks.
Genbudo Park features 5 beautiful basalt Genbudo Caves with over 1.6 million years of geological history. Entrance fee to the park was $5 per adult. It was pretty cool to look at these caves but we didn’t spend too much time here aside from resting and drinking water.
I think the best part about this activity was riding bicycles in this kind of countryside town. The view and landscape really looked like something out of an anime. It was very private – almost no other cyclists or cars around and it made us feel like kids again, pedalling really fast and zooming down hills or meadows 🚴♀️.
It was a hot day but we felt free and refreshed! I do not recommend wearing a dress though – pretty sure I flashed several truck drivers with my panties.
Lunch: かに寿司 大黒屋
After cycling for 2 hours, we were hungry and very hot. Our stays at the ryokans do not include lunch, only dinner and breakfast, so we quickly decided to eat at a local restaurant instead.
We opted for this Japanese restaurant that had a lot of crab meals on display since Kinosaki Onsen is known to be close to crab town. It was a very small mom and pop’s type of feel and pretty empty as we came in around 1:30pm.
I ordered a crab rice bowl with egg for around $13 CAD and my husband ordered a crab soba with crab sushi for $18 CAD – really reasonable prices!
The food wasn’t anything amazing but the crab tasted fresh and sweet and that was what we were looking for. The owner/chef even gave us a little post card as a souvenir when they found out we are foreigners – so nice!
Snacks: Crab coquette and ice cream
On our walk back to our new ryokan, we also grabbed 2 other snacks that we’ve been wanting to try.
The first is a crab coquette 🦀 for $5 that was SO amazing and delicious! Creamy and fried so well.
The second was this ice cream shop that was sold out on the first day. We wanted to try their signature ice cream which was called the stork that brings happiness or something like that. It is essentially a green tea ice cream with puffed rice added to it – nothing that special.
Accommodations: Nishimuraya Honkan
At around 2:25pm, we checked into our new ryokan for the night – Nishimuraya Honkan.
When we were planning for this honeymoon, we knew we wanted to splurge 1 night in Kinosaki and we did so by staying at this Japanese hotel. Nishimuraya Honkan has been operating for 6+ generations with 160+ years of history, making it one of the oldest ryokans in town.
When we arrived for check-in (they also have an earlier check-in at 2pm. most places are 3pm check-in), we were given a tour of the facilities by an English-speaking attendant. There is a lobby with free beverages like coffee, tea and juices, a small museum of the ryokan, a gift store and 2 private baths that get switched every day for male and female.
We booked a Hatsune room which is more private because it comes with your own open-air bath and garden. Note that the water in the open-air bath is not onsen water, though!
Aside from the open-air bath and garden, the room is pretty similar to the room we stayed in at Tsutaya Inn, although amenities are fancier and all the drinks in the mini-fridge are also complimentary.
Our 1 night stay at Nishimuraya Honkan costed us $988 CAD! Definitely a more bougie accommodation option. Similar to Tsutaya Inn, it comes with the onsen pass, Kaiseki dinner and breakfast as well as some other perks like the free bicycle rentals, etc.
We explored our room and drank some tea (our attendant whisked the powder in front of us) and ate some tea snacks made in-house.
Activity: Private onsen
Another perk of staying at Nishimuraya Honkan is that we get access to book one of their private onsens. You can also book if you are staying at their sister hotel, Nishimuraya Hotel Shogetsutei.
All of the bath houses in Kinosaki Onsen and even the ones inside your ryokan are separated Male/Female. So unless you book a room that has an open-air bath like our Hatsune Room, you will not be able to experience or soak in the onsen water with your partner of the opposite sex. So if you are hoping to experience it together or if you don’t want to be around naked strangers, you may want to consider booking a private onsen.
Nishimuraya has 3 private onsens to choose from and they all tap into the actual hot spring water (not just regular hot water). The 3 private onsens just differ in style, but we chose the Japanese style room (Gingetsu) and it comes with a rock sauna and lounge area.
We were privately transported via car from Nishimuraya Honkan to the sister hotel (around a 10 minute drive) and guided to our private onsen. Upon entering, we were really excited because it was so romantic and luxurious! The view was mountainscape and it was so peaceful 😌!
The cost to book our private onsen was $80 CAD and it includes 70 mins for a maximum of 4 people. Bath towel, sauna towel, mineral water & sparkling wine are provided. I really enjoyed sipping on that sparkling wine as we relaxed in the bath. Overall, I think this experience was worth it for us on our honeymoon.
Dinner: Kaiseki dinner at Nishimuraya Honkan
Dinner time and this means another amazing kaiseki meal at our ryokan! Unlike Tsutaya Inn, Nishimuraya still offers dinners inside your own room so there is more privacy. We had an attendant welcome as we returned from our private onsen.
We were gifted a bamboo holder amount of sake with gold flakes in it for our honeymoon. In fact, they gifted us several additional small appetizers for our special celebration 😚.
The courses were similar to Tsutaya Inn with an appetizer, crab, sashimi, meat and fish course, but the food had a bit more finesse to it. For example, all the vegetables were cut into really intricate shapes and seasoned differently. The crab was simmered in this pot for an umami explosion. The sashimi included bluefin tuna and a very chewy/fresh squid. We also had a Tajima beef course that was cooked in a leaf – it was so juicy and smelled amazing. And she cooked the rice in our room on a little fireplace burner.
Our server also prepared drinks for us as we brought over our plum wine from last night. The entire meal took around 2 hours!
Activity: Evening soak
I must sound like a filthy person but yes after our very filling and rich kaiseki meal, we forced ourselves to go to 2 more soaks before retiring for the night.
First, I wanted to check out Nishimuraya Honkan’s bath before they switch out the male and female signs the next morning. When I went in the evening, it was a Chinese style bath with indoor and outdoor options and it had a lot of circular themes. My husband and I were the only ones in the baths and we could talk to each other in the outdoor baths by lowkey yelling at each other.
Then, I realized we never even used the open-air bath in our own room so I had to do a second quick soak there too but obviously I was all onsen-ed out 😅. Just today I had taken 4 bath soaks 💀.
After dinner, futons are laid out again and we relaxed with our leftover plum wine and snacks while watching an episode of Culinary Class Wars on Netflix.
Final thoughts
We had an amazing and romantic time during our 2 day stay in Kinosaki Onsen Town.
The first day was more of a reflection day since it mirrored a very similar experience to our first time in Kinosaki. We stayed at the same ryokan, went to the same onsens and had similar meals and shopping experiences. Except this time, we were more confident about what was happening.
Recommended: Read about our first time staying at Kinosaki Onsen Town.
The second day was new to us because we had a full day to explore Kinosaki! My favourite part of the day was actually the bicycle rentals and just playing in the beautiful countryside of Japan. Even though we were quite sweaty after, it felt good to move and see the town from that perspective.
Again, I also highly recommend the private onsen experience. The price to book (~$80) is reasonable, but it comes with the price tag of staying at a more expensive hotel.
In comparing Tsutaya Inn to Nishimuraya Honkan, I have these thoughts:
- Total cost: Tsutaya $384 vs. Nishimuraya $988. This is a $600+ difference 💸 for similar basic offerings such as 1 night stay, 2 kaiseki dinners, 2 breakfasts, and 2 onsen passes.
- Nishimuraya had more services and perks such as the private onsen booking, free bicycle rentals, free beverages, more attendants, a more luxurious kaiseki dinner, 2 different baths inside the facility, etc.
- Both rooms were similar except Nishimuraya had the private open-air bath.
Given this, Tsutaya Inn is definitely more worth it for still an amazing ryokan experience where you feel well taken care of. I’m not sure if the difference in Kaiseki meals and small perks can amount to that $600 difference, but I am glad we stayed at Nishimuraya to treat ourselves and see what the more luxury option is like.
In the end, Kinosaki Onsen is still one of our favourite spots in the world and we can’t wait to come back! Stay tuned for my next travel recap as we leave Kinosaki Onsen and travel to Kyoto!
Sincerely, Loewe
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