Tagawa Ryusenkaku

I stayed there for a good day. It rained heavily that day, but we were able to warm up in the hot springs. The staff kindly explained things to us. Unfortunately, there were not many people using the shuttle service, so I took the village bus. It's a rural area so there's nothing around. Apparently, the area around the hot springs was lively in the 1970s.

I stayed here using the Ishikawa Prefecture Fukukouwari discount. It was about 30 minutes by car from Kanazawa. The room was a Japanese-Western style room with a semi-open-air bath. The open-air bath and the bath in the room are not hot springs, but the water is always running. I used the open-air bath in the room the next morning. It is an open-air bath that can fit about two people, and it is equipped with a shower. My partner did not use it, and the next morning we went to the smaller indoor bath. The open-air bath at this inn is said to be the largest in the Hokuriku region. The open-air bath is mixed, and both men and women wear bathing suits to enter. First, you go to the large bath for men and women, get ready to enter the bath, go to the indoor bath, and from there, put on the bathing suit that is placed in the changing room for the open-air bath, and go out to the open-air bath. The bathing suit is a cloth that is larger than a rectangular bath towel and does not cling to the skin, and it is fastened with buttons. Unfortunately, the open-air bath cannot be used in the morning. I thought mixed bathing would be unpleasant, but when I wore the bathing suit, it didn't bother me so much. There were many couples and married couples there. There were many day-trippers, probably because it was the weekend. The indoor bath was large, and there were lotions and milky lotions in the washroom area. For dinner, we had a basic kaiseki meal with butter-fried abalone, and we had both breakfast and dinner in a private room. The alcohol was a bit pricey, with 300cc of local sake costing 1,900 yen. The food was very good. We enjoyed all the sashimi and appetizers. The abalone took a while to arrive, but when it finally did, it was still moving, so we asked if we could have it as sashimi, and they did. It was the biggest abalone we had ever eaten, so my partner was delighted with the sashimi, saying, "If we had just eaten this at a sushi restaurant, it would cost about 10,000 yen." The breakfast was also delicious, and we said it was lighter in flavor and healthier than the food we usually eat at the inn. The veteran waitress at the dining area was kind. The staff from overseas also worked hard. The landlady was there when we checked out and when we checked in, and she greeted us and saw us off (she also took photos for us). A bath in the rice paddies when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom will surely be an unforgettable memory.

The mixed-gender hot spring was very good.