Tenninkyo Onsen Oyado Shikishimaso

Oyado Shikishimaso stands at the far end of Tenninkyo, a gorge carved by the upper Chubetsu River inside Daisetsuzan National Park, in Higashikawa Town, Hokkaido. The source was located in 1897 by Tamezo Matsuyama, an innkeeper from Asahikawa, guided by local Ainu people, and the spa opened in 1900 under the name Matsuyama Onsen. The place name was standardised as Tenninkyo Onsen in 1937, yet the inn's postal address is still Matsuyama Onsen, preserving the original name. Of the four lodgings that once lined the gorge, the Tenninkyo Grand Hotel closed in 2011, the Tenninkyo Park Hotel in 2014 and Tenninkaku suspended business in 2018, leaving Shikishimaso as the only inn still operating here.

The water is a magnesium-calcium-sodium sulphate-bicarbonate-chloride spring, faintly amber in colour and neutral in character. The inn states that its baths are supplied as 100 percent free-flowing spring water drawn straight from the source. It carries 202.6 mg/L of metasilicic acid, a compound associated with smooth skin, measured in June 2025 - more than four times the reference level used to describe a beauty spring. It is traditionally recommended for skin condition, circulation, sensitivity to cold, fatigue and neuralgia.

The inn has just 18 rooms. The main bathhouse consists of two indoor baths, one framed in wood and one in stone, which alternate between men and women, plus an open-air bath. The Premium Japanese-Western Suite and the Corner Suite each have their own semi-open-air bath fed by the spring. Day visitors are welcome from 12:00 to 15:00, with last entry at 14:00, for 1,000 yen per adult, 500 yen for primary school children and free for preschoolers; there is no general resting room. Hagoromo Falls, a 270-metre cascade listed among Japan's 100 finest waterfalls, is about a 15-minute walk away.