Kotohikihama Wa no Auberge Matsutsuru

Matsutsuru is a five-room inn standing on a rise a five-minute walk from Kotohikihama, the singing-sand beach on the Tango Peninsula in Kyotango City, Kyoto Prefecture. Kotohikihama is designated a national natural monument and place of scenic beauty for the sound its quartz sand makes underfoot, and the local community has long kept the beach clean enough for the sand to keep singing. The house operates as an auberge, serving creative kaiseki built on Japanese technique and on fish, vegetables and rice from the Tango coast and its hinterland, and it accepts only five parties a day.

The source, named Kotohikihama Nakisuna Onsen, is an alkaline simple spring emerging at 48.7C. The inn states that no water is added, no reheating is applied and no recirculation filter is used, so the tubs are filled with undiluted source water. The water is clear and notably soft on the skin, which has earned it the local description of a bath filled with lotion, and it is recommended for fatigue, nerve pain, muscle and joint pain, frozen shoulder, poor circulation and convalescence.

Bathing is in an indoor bath and an open-air bath, one of each for men and women, open from 15:00 to 22:30 and again from 7:00 to 9:00 the following morning. The five guest rooms comprise three Japanese-Western rooms and two Japanese-style rooms, accommodating up to twenty guests, and there is parking for fifteen cars. Day bathing is not offered, so the spring is for overnight guests only. Rates start at around 22,000 yen per person, and in winter the kitchen builds its menus around snow crab.