Shichikama Onsen Yuyado Okuzawa Ryokan

Okuzawa Ryokan is a small family-run inn with only four Japanese-style rooms, located in the Shichikama district of Shin-Onsen Town, Mikata District, Hyogo Prefecture. Together with Hamasaka Onsen and Futsukaichi Onsen, Shichikama Onsen forms the Hamasaka Onsen district, the only nationally designated health resort hot spring area in Hyogo Prefecture, and the village still carries the atmosphere of a traditional healing spa. One local account traces the place name to seven cauldrons once used for boiling seawater into salt along what was then an inlet.

The spring is a sodium-calcium sulfate spring (hypotonic, neutral, high-temperature). The inn draws water of roughly 50 degrees Celsius and feeds it straight into its tubs without dilution or reheating. The water is clear with a faint yellowish-brown tint, tasteless and odorless, and retains heat so well that locals call it the spring that makes a kotatsu unnecessary. It is regarded as beneficial for muscle and joint pain and stiffness, poor circulation, weak digestion, mild hypertension, autonomic nervous instability, and general fatigue.

Bathing is in two indoor tubs, both reserved for private use by one party at a time, with roughly forty minutes suggested per session. There is no open-air bath and no sauna. Meals centre on seafood landed at Hamasaka, Japan's leading port for snow crab and firefly squid, alongside home-grown vegetables. Parking is free for ten cars. The inn does not offer day-use bathing; visitors seeking a daytime soak use the public bathhouse Shichikama Onsen Yu-raku-kan, a three-minute walk away.