OnsenQuest

Prefectures / Nara

Dorogawa Onsen Visitor Center

洞川温泉ビジターセンター · Dorogawa Onsen

Policy not published (day visit)

Can you bathe here with a tattoo?

This is the question we built the site around, so we answer it per situation.

Visiting for the day

They have not said

The tattoo policy is not stated publicly. Please contact the facility.

How it scores

Every onsen on this site is scored on the same five things.

ViewWaterComfortSettingAccess

Verified by the editor

View3
Water3
Comfort4.5
Setting4.5
Access3
△Somewhere to sit — A small rest area
○Anything else nearby — In the middle of things

Rebuilt from scratch in 2024 at a cost of about 670 million yen, replacing the 1993 bath house that stood here - so it is the newest building on this list by a wide margin, in Yoshino cedar and cypress with a much larger open-air bath. The water itself is a mild alkaline simple spring rather than a striking one; what you come for is the setting, at the mouth of a pilgrimage village you can walk around all evening in a yukata.

Every onsen on this site is scored against the same written rubric, and every score has been reviewed by the editor. The ones marked Visited were also bathed in personally.

The baths

Indoor bath

One indoor and one open-air bath on each of the men's and women's sides, lined in cypress and Yoshino cedar. Shampoo, conditioner and body soap provided.

Open to day visitors

Open-air bath

The open-air bath is about two and a half times the size of the one in the old building, which this replaced in April 2024. The water is heated by a wood-fired boiler burning thinnings from the village's own forests.

Open to day visitors

Practical details

Day visits
Yes — you can bathe without staying overnight.
11:00-20:00, last admission 19:30. Closed Wednesdays - the next day instead if the Wednesday is a public holiday - and 29 December to 1 January, with shortened hours on 2 and 3 January.
Day visit price
¥800
Adults 800 yen, children aged 3 to elementary school 200 yen, 10 percent off for groups of ten or more. You cannot come in just to use the rest room: admission is charged even if you do not bathe. Parking is 300 yen an hour, capped at 3,000 yen a day, with the first 90 minutes free if you get your ticket stamped at reception.
Staying overnight
No
Getting there
At the entrance to the Dorogawa hot-spring street, an 820 m-high village of wooden lodging houses that has served pilgrims to Mount Omine for centuries. Nara Kotsu buses run from Shimoichiguchi Station on the Kintetsu Yoshino Line to the Dorogawa Onsen terminus, but only a handful a day. If you drive, route via the Tenkawa-Kawai district: the village warns that some car navigation systems send you over the Konami pass on prefectural road 48, which is narrow and hard to pass on.
Official website
www.vill.tenkawa.nara.jp/tourism/spot/5145

Visit the official website ↗

Staying nearby

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Where to stay in Dorogawa OnsenBooking.com ↗Day-pass tickets and coupons for NaraAsoview (Japanese-language site) ↗

About the day-pass link: Asoview is the main place day-use onsen in Japan sell entry tickets and discount coupons in advance. It is a Japanese-only site, so use your browser’s translation — you show the ticket on your phone at the door.

What we have not confirmed

We would rather show a gap than guess.