OnsenQuest

Prefectures / Kumamoto

Tsuetate Onsen Motoyu

杖立温泉 元湯 · Tsuetate 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
Comfort2
Setting4
Access2
×Somewhere to sit — Bathe and leave
○Anything else nearby — In the middle of things

A free rock bath at the river's edge, roofed but otherwise open, in the middle of a steep old hot-spring village of stone stairways and steam vents. It is mixed-gender and directly beside a public footpath, which is the whole story: the setting is lovely and the exposure is real. Nothing here but the tub — no toilet, no soap, nowhere to sit.

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

A small half-open rock bath on the bank of the Tsuetate River under a simple wooden roof, said to have been the bath in which Emperor Ojin was first washed some 1,800 years ago. The village's own site is blunt about the catch: it is mixed-gender (konyoku) and it faces the riverside walking path, with no screening, so 'it takes a little courage to get in'.

Open to day visitors

Practical details

Day visits
Yes — you can bathe without staying overnight.
Day visit price
Free
Free. Unlike the village's other public baths there is no honesty box here. Bring your own towel and soap — none are provided — and note there is no toilet at the bath.
Staying overnight
No
Getting there
On the riverbank at the foot of Momiji Bridge, at the downstream end of the Tsuetate hot-spring village in Oguni Town, on the Kumamoto/Oita border. There is a free shared car park for the village's public baths. Reaching Tsuetate without a car means a bus from JR Hita station (Oita side) or from Kurokawa/Oguni; services are infrequent.
Official website
tsuetate-onsen.com/Facilities/937

Visit the official website ↗

Staying nearby

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Where to stay in Tsuetate OnsenBooking.com ↗Day-pass tickets and coupons for KumamotoAsoview (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.