Sumatakyo Onsen Tekarisanso

Tekarisanso is a small ten-room wooden inn standing midway along the hot spring street of Sumatakyo Onsen, a gorge village carved by the Sumata River in the southern foothills of the Southern Alps, in Kawanehon Town, Shizuoka Prefecture. Sumatakyo Onsen itself was opened in 1957, and Tekarisanso followed in 1963. Its name comes from Mount Tekari, the Southern Alps peak that rises deep behind the valley, and the surrounding slopes are cloaked in the old-growth forest of the Sumatakyo Promenade and the famous Yume no Tsuribashi suspension bridge.

The water is a simple sulfur spring emerging at 43.0 degrees Celsius with a pH of 9.1. It is clear and colorless yet carries a distinct sulfur aroma. The source lies about four kilometers upstream in the mountains, so the water is reheated after its long pipe journey, but no water is added, no recirculation filter is used, and no chlorination is applied. Sumatakyo water is nicknamed the Beauty-Making Spring for the silky feel it leaves on the skin, and Tekarisanso is regarded as having both the largest flow and the strongest concentration in the village, with grey cottony mineral flakes drifting through the tub.

Bathing is in a single gender-separated indoor bath; there is no open-air bath here. The bathhouse has a lofty, hall-like ceiling above a tub wide enough to swim in, and overnight guests may use it freely from morning until night. Day-trip bathing costs 500 yen for adults and 400 yen for children, from 14:00 to 17:00 (from 11:00 in summer), by advance phone arrangement. Free parking for 60 cars is available. The inn is also known as the one lodging in Sumatakyo that welcomes motorcycle travellers, and for its home-cooked game dishes.