OnsenQuest

Prefectures / Tochigi

Omaru Onsen Ryokan

大丸温泉旅館 · Nasu Onsen

Tattoos not allowed (day visit)Policy not published (overnight)

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

No — tattooed guests are turned away

Guests with tattoos are refused entry to the facility, so private baths are not an option either.

Source: official website · checked 2026-09-10

Staying overnight

They have not said

The tattoo policy is not stated publicly. A private or in-room bath is available, which is often an option for tattooed guests.

How it scores

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

ViewWaterComfortSettingAccess

Verified by the editor

View5
Water5
Comfort4
Setting5
Access2
—Somewhere to sit — not checked
△Anything else nearby — Nearby, but off to one side

One of the few places in Japan where the bath is literally a river: the inn dams its own hot stream into a series of pools running down the mountainside, and you soak in the current with forest on both sides. Five sources are blended for temperature and the water is 100 percent free-flowing. Mixed bathing is the rule in the river baths, but a bathing garment is provided and included in the day-use fee, and there is a women-only pool at the top. The catch for readers with tattoos is absolute: day-use bathing is refused, and the private bath is for overnight guests only.

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

Open-air bath

Kawa-no-Yu, the bath the inn is famous for: several of its own sources merge into a stream, which is dammed into a chain of open-air pools (Shirakaba, Ajisai, Azami). Mixed bathing in a bathing garment, in the tradition the inn has kept since it opened.

Open to day visitors

Open-air bath

A women-only open-air bath at the top of the stream, closest to the source.

Open to day visitors

Indoor bath

Separate men's and women's indoor baths, free-flowing from the source, built with Ashino stone from Tochigi.

Open to day visitors

Private (kashikiri) bath

The private bath Oku-no-Yu needs no reservation but is for overnight guests only - day visitors are explicitly excluded, so it is not a way around the tattoo ban.

Overnight guests only

A private bath means nobody else is in the water with you — often the practical answer if the shared baths are closed to tattooed guests.

Practical details

Day visits
Yes — you can bathe without staying overnight.
Day-use reception 11:30-14:30, bathing ends 15:00. Closed to day visitors on the dates marked on the official calendar.
Day visit price
¥1,300
Adults 1,300 yen, children aged 3 to primary school 1,000 yen. The price includes a face towel and a yuamigi bathing garment, which you are expected to wear in the mixed-bathing river baths.
Staying overnight
Yes
Getting there
The last inn on the road up Mt. Chausu, in the Nasu highlands. About 40 minutes by taxi from Nasu-Shiobara Shinkansen Station, or roughly 60 minutes by Kanto Bus from Nasu-Shiobara or Kuroiso Station towards Nasu Ropeway, getting off at Omaru Onsen. Overnight guests can use that bus for a flat 500 yen each way by giving the inn's name to the driver.
Official website
www.omaru.co.jp

Visit the official website ↗

Book it

The links below are affiliate links — we may earn a commission if you book through them, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what we list or how we score it.

Check rates and availabilityAgoda ↗Compare on Booking.comBooking.com ↗Day-pass tickets and coupons for Nasu OnsenAsoview (Japanese-language site) ↗

Why Agoda for Japan: it lists a lot of ryokan and small inns that the Western booking sites never picked up, and it usually prices Japanese properties in yen, so you are not paying a conversion spread on top of the room rate. Worth comparing before you book — the difference on a ryokan is often larger than you would expect.

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.