Kinosaki Onsen

Kansai, Japan · Town / small city, Countryside / satoyama

A hot-spring town with an idea behind it: that the whole town is a single inn. The station is the entrance hall, the street is the corridor, the inns are the guest rooms and the public baths are the big bath, which is why people come out into the street in yukata and wooden clogs and move from one bath to the next under the willows along the Otani river. The tourism association dates the spring's opening to the eighth century and marked thirteen hundred years in 2020. There are six baths, not seven as almost every guide says: the seventh has been shut since 2024. Around it, the same municipality holds things you would not expect: a state-protected castle town where the soba comes on little plates five at a time, a cliff of basalt columns where in 1929 the world was told for the first time that the Earth's magnetic field had once reversed, and the park where a stork extinct in the wild was put back in the sky.

The essentials

Getting there

Train — Kinosaki is walked, and it was built that way: the town is flat, there are no steps between the street and the doors of the shops or the inns, and so it works well even in a wheelchair; the tourist office rents three electric chairs (from ¥3,000 for four hours, by reservation) and there are free umbrellas at ten points around town. What needs solving is the rest of the municipality, which is large. Izushi is about twenty kilometres south and is reached by bus or car; Genbudo is about five kilometres upriver and the stork park about twelve to the south, both easier by car. A seasonal warning: from 6 November the crab begins and the inns fill months ahead, with the prices that brings; outside that season the same town is a good deal cheaper.

Frequently asked questions about Kinosaki Onsen

What to do in Kinosaki Onsen: 11 activities

• Izushi, the protected castle town 2 h must-see Izushi, Toyooka · 35 min

  Twenty kilometres south of Kinosaki, in the same municipality, there is a district of twenty-three point one hectares that the state has protected since 4 December 2007 as a castle town. The dossier tells the story in two stages. The first is 1604, when the castle went up at the foot of Mount Ariko and the town organised itself around it until it became the political and economic centre of Tajima; the plot divisions and street frontages today are still those of the 1810 town map. The second is 1876, when a fire took most of the town: what stands was rebuilt on top of that layout, with gabled houses entered on the long side, and the dossier itself calls it a modern castle town.

• The public baths: there are six, not seven 3 h must-see

  Almost every guide talks about Kinosaki's seven external baths, and even the prefecture's own tourism site repeats it. There are six. The seventh, Satono-yu, which stood beside the station, has been under extended closure since 1 April 2024 according to Toyooka city, with no reopening date. The ones running are Kono-yu, Mandara-yu, Gosho-no-yu, Ichi-no-yu, Yanagi-yu and Jizo-yu. Eight hundred yen for adults and ¥400 from age three to elementary school, the same at all six, or ¥1,500 for a one-day pass for people not staying the night. The hours are not the same everywhere: Mandara-yu and Yanagi-yu open at 15:00 and the other four at 7:00, and all close at 23:00. Each takes a different day of the week off, which forces you to plan the order: Monday Jizo-yu, Tuesday Kono-yu, Wednesday Mandara-yu and Ichi-no-yu, Thursday Gosho-no-yu and Yanagi-yu. The water is sodium-calcium chloride and comes out at 42 degrees.

• Thirteen hundred years and a river lined with willows 2 h must-see

  The tourism association says the monk Dochi Shonin arrived in 717 and that in 2020 the town marked thirteen hundred years since the spring was opened; it appears in poetry from the Heian period and has a long relationship with literature, of which the best known piece is that Shiga Naoya wrote here. What you see today is a small town two or three kilometres from the Sea of Japan, with the Otani river running through the middle of it and a line of willows along the bank, stone bridges and the wooden fronts of the inns. There is a geological detail that explains the place: Kinosaki is built on what was once an inlet, filled in.

• The cliff where they found that north had once been south 1.5 h Genbudo, Toyooka · 15 min

  An eruption one million six hundred thousand years ago left a wall of basalt here that cracked into columns as it cooled. People quarried it for centuries: the columns split easily and served as house foundations and as weights for pickles, and that is where the five caves came from, named after the four Chinese guardian animals. But what makes this place genuinely important is something else. In 1926 Matsuyama Motonori, of Kyoto Imperial University, measured the magnetism of that basalt here and found it the opposite way round from today's; in 1929 he announced that there had been an age when the Earth's magnetic field was reversed, and it was the first time anyone had said so anywhere. Toyooka city adds that the site is among the hundred selected as world geological heritage by the International Union of Geological Sciences.

• The crab, from 6 November onwards 2 h only the season opens on 6 November; males until 20 March and females until the end of December

  On 6 November the snow crab season opens in the Sea of Japan, and that changes the whole town: it is Kinosaki's high season and the inns are booked months ahead. The male is the matsuba-gani and, according to Toyooka city, is fished until 20 March; the female, smaller and carrying roe, is the seko-gani and is fished only until the end of December. Tsuiyama is the port that lands it here, and its crab carries a blue tag on the leg to identify it: it is a brand of its own and you pay for it. An idea of the prices at the top of the market: at the first auction of a recent season the best male went for ¥63,000. What you eat at an inn is not that, but it is worth knowing that crab puts the price of the night up noticeably.

• Izushi soba, five little plates at a time 1.5 h Izushi, Toyooka · 35 min

  In 1706 the Sengoku clan moved here from the Ueda domain in Shinshu, which is soba country, and brought its craftsmen; out of the mix with what Izushi already did came this. The little plates came later, in the late Edo period, when street stalls served it on hand plates for convenience, and it settled into the white Izushi porcelain, which is the town's other craft. A portion is five plates. The condiments are egg, grated yam, spring onion, grated daikon and wasabi, and there is a recommended order: the first with spring onion and wasabi and the sauce poured over; the second beating the egg in the cup before adding the sauce, never after; the third with half the grated yam mixed in and the fourth with the rest on top. From the fifth on, as you like. There is a ¥2,000 pass with three imitation old coins, each good for three plates at a different house, valid three months.

• The storks that came back to the sky 2 h Shounji, Toyooka · 25 min

  The oriental stork went extinct in the wild in Japan, and this plain was the last place in the country where it bred. What was done afterwards is the reason to come: from 1965 Hyogo and Toyooka ran a breeding programme that spent twenty-three years getting nowhere, until in 1985 six chicks arrived from the Soviet Union and in 1989 the first captive-bred stork in Japan was born in Toyooka. In 2005 the first were released into the wild, on a trial basis. Today they are seen flying all over the Toyooka basin. The prefectural park opens 9:00 to 17:00, closes on Mondays and from 28 December to 4 January, and both entry and parking are free.

• The whole town is one inn 1.5 h

  It is not a brochure line, it is how the place is organised and how they explain it themselves: the station is the entrance hall, the street is the corridor, the inns are the guest rooms, the public baths are the big bath and the shops are the shop counter. Everything else follows from that. The inns tend to be small with modest baths of their own, because the real bath is outside; you go out into the street in yukata and clogs, and the clatter of geta on the paving is literally the sound of the town. And a practical consequence follows too: the town is flat with no steps between the street and the doors, it works well in a wheelchair, the tourist office rents three electric chairs from ¥3,000 for four hours by reservation, one shop rents yukata of adapted design, and there are free umbrellas at ten points.

• The castle ruins and the red torii 1 h Izushi, Toyooka · 35 min

  Of Izushi castle the main keep is gone: the stone walls remain, and the corner turrets, the entrance gate and a bridge have been rebuilt. What surprises you is what is up the slope beside it, the Arikoyama Inari shrine, with a chain of red torii running up the hillside that the prefecture's own tourism site compares to Fushimi Inari in Kyoto, but with nobody in front of you. It is a short climb and it is the town's viewpoint.

• The San'in Coast geopark 3 h

  This whole coast is a UNESCO global geopark and runs across six municipalities in three prefectures, from Tottori to Kyoto. The Toyooka part has more sites than you would expect, and it is worth knowing they exist because they are half-morning outings: the white sand beach at Takeno, on the ministry's list of Japan's hundred best shores; the Hasakari rock, a round stone that fell and wedged between two rock pillars, a prefectural scenic site; the Nekosaki peninsula, the northernmost point of Hyogo, with giant's kettles and fossils; the Kannabe volcano, about twenty-two thousand years old; and two waterfalls, the Hattan at twenty-four metres and the Gendayu at thirty. There is also a wetland, Toshima, listed as a Ramsar site in 2012.

• The Shinkoro, a drum tower and then a clock 0.5 h Izushi, Toyooka · 35 min

  It is Izushi's silhouette: a wooden tower raised in 1871 on the platform of the old main gate of the castle's third enclosure. It was not born as a clock but as a drum tower, to give the hour with a taiko beat every hour, which is where the name comes from. The clock came later: the prefecture's tourism site gives 1881 and adds that it is Japan's oldest clock tower. It is worth saying who says what, because Toyooka city, which owns it, does not repeat that claim: its own page sticks to the drum and to calling it the town's symbol.

What only happens on specific dates

• The crab, from 6 November onwards the season opens on 6 November; males until 20 March and females until the end of December

Chains well with

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