Tanoharu Onsen Tairoukan

Tairoukan stands on the bank of the Tanoharu River in Manganji, Minamioguni Town, Aso District, Kumamoto Prefecture, about five minutes by car from the far better-known Kurokawa Onsen. Minamioguni Town records trace the opening of Tanoharu Onsen to the Kamakura period, and by the Edo period samurai of the Hosokawa domain came here to treat their wounds. The inn itself was established in 1900 and served as a location for the classic Japanese film series Otoko wa Tsurai yo; photographs and posters from the shoot still hang inside. Fireflies appear along the river in early summer.

The spring is a sodium chloride-bicarbonate water. According to the inn, all eight bathing places are fed directly from the source and flow continuously without any heating or cooling. The inn does not publish a source temperature or pH figure.

The eight baths each have a different character: a private open-air bath facing a waterfall, a seasonal open-air bath, a barrel bath made from a cask once used by a village headman, a goemon iron-pot bath, a cypress bath and a stone bath. Six of them were newly built, and staying guests may reserve any of them free of charge as often as they like. The inn has eleven rooms, all Japanese-style. Day visitors pay 1,500 yen for 60 minutes in a private bath (2,000 yen for the waterfall bath) or 500 yen for the indoor bath.