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Towada-Hachimantai NP, Akita
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One origin tale says a boy gathering greens for his sick father found a wounded crane bathing here. The father recovered in the spring, giving it the name Tsurunoyu; the inn says it was once called Tazawa-no-yu.
Tazawako’s Yamanoimo nabe isn’t an ancient recipe: local inn and hotel chefs developed it as a signature dish. At Tsurunoyu, grated sticky mountain yam is dropped into miso broth, where it cooks into soft dumplings.
Four distinct springs bubble up within a 50-meter radius: Shiroyu, Kuroyu, Nakanoyu and Takiyu. Their water chemistry differs, the inn notes, even though the baths can look similar—a remarkable lineup in one compact yard.
A tourism-agency history says an Akita lord crossed Lake Tazawa by boat to bathe here in 1638 and ordered the route improved. A Kameda lord followed in 1661; ordinary guests appear in records from 1688–1704.
The names have flipped: today’s thatched Honjin was once the waki-honjin for lower-ranked travelers; lords used the original Honjin, now the site of Shin-Honjin. This 43-meter building lines up five 11-tatami rooms.
The famous milky mixed outdoor bath has a thoughtful entrance: steps, tree-trunk screens and carefully placed rocks let women enter while remaining submerged to the neck. Privacy was built into the bath’s layout.
Ink paintings in Shin-Honjin’s upstairs hall record old journeys: some visitors rode or walked carrying rice and bedding, while one scene shows nearby hills stripped bare for firewood. The walls preserve both travel and its cost.
A post in one Honjin room bears a carved celebration of Japan’s victory in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895)—an unexpectedly modern message in a thatched inn associated with Edo-period travel.
Renewing the thatched Honjin is a local craft chain: susuki grass is cut in Obonai-Shimotakano, kept through a winter, then laid by traditional roofers from Kamishiro-Umezawa. The roof is renewed every few decades.
Meals at Tsurunoyu are served on Kawatsura-nuri lacquer trays, linking its mountain cooking to a craft from Yuzawa. Its origin story reaches back about 830 years, when farm families began lacquering weapons for supplementary income.
