Ushiobara Onsen Matsukawa

Ushiobara Onsen Matsukawa is a single inn standing on the Yoshiwa plateau at roughly 700 meters above sea level, at the foot of Mount Kanmuri (1,339 m) within Nishi-Chugoku Sanchi Quasi-National Park in the far west of Hiroshima Prefecture. Founded in 1934, it sits just off National Route 186 among forest and clear mountain streams. Temperatures here run four to five degrees Celsius below the coast and five to ten degrees below central Hiroshima, so the seasons arrive distinctly: daffodils in late March, cherry blossom in mid-April, hydrangeas and fireflies in late June, autumn colour in late October, and snow from December. As one of the few genuine hot spring inns in Hiroshima Prefecture, it serves both as a base for visiting Miyajima and the city and as a stop for skiers.

The water is a strongly radon-bearing spring, classified as a radioactive spring. The inn reports a radon content that stays between 80 and 100 Mache units, varying with season and weather, far above the 8.25 Mache threshold for a designated therapeutic spring; the inn describes this as roughly fourteen times the old Ministry of Health bathing-cure standard. Colourless, odourless and tasteless, the water is approved for drinking: there is a drinking station on the fifth floor, drinkable spring water at the guest room basins, and a free filling point in front of the main entrance, and the same water is used for the kitchen's local dishes and for the house onsen coffee. The source temperature and pH are not published, and the inn does not state whether the baths are heated, diluted, recirculated or chlorinated; booking sites disagree on this point, so the posted analysis sheet on site is the reliable reference.

All bathing is on the fifth floor. There is an open-air bath looking out over the mountains, two large baths finished in wood and in stone that alternate between men and women daily, and a steam bath that the inn considers the best match for this water, along with a plain hot tub, a cold tub, a jet bath, a bubble bath and a shoulder cascade, seven to eight bathing options in all. Day-trip bathing costs 700 yen for adults, 350 yen for children aged three to elementary school, and 200 yen for infants, from 10:00 to 20:00 on Saturdays and 10:00 to 17:00 on Sundays and public holidays. The inn is closed every Monday and Tuesday. Overnight stays start at 12,100 yen with two meals on weekdays in the new wing; there are 18 guest rooms in total and free parking for about 45 cars.