The editor’s ten

At 1,280 m this is the highest hot-spring inn in Hokkaido, and the open-air bath looks straight out at the Tokachi volcanic range; two sources feed it, an iron-brown water and a cold acidic one, both free-flowing with nothing added and nothing reheated. Reaching it without a car means a sparse town bus from Kamifurano, and there is no tatami hall to sit out a whole day, so come for the mountain and the water.

The reason people come to Ibusuki: open-air baths only, on a headland above the East China Sea with Mt Kaimon filling the western outlook, rebuilt and reopened at the end of 2025. The water is a strong salt spring running free-flowing from a 100C source; buses from Yamagawa Station are infrequent, so check the last departure before you get in.

The most famous view bath in Yamanashi and, for a tattooed traveller, the single most useful entry in this dataset: a hillside open-air bath over the whole Kofu basin with Mt Fuji on the horizon, open from before dawn, and tattoos are simply allowed. Facilities are deliberately basic and you will want a car or a taxi.

A mountain bath at the far northern end of the Eizan Railway, ten minutes on foot from Kurama Station with a free shuttle as well, and one of the few places near Kyoto that states outright that tattooed guests may bathe. The open-air bath looks into the cedar hills, and Kurama-dera and the walk over to Kibune start at the door.

One of Japan's largest open-air baths, entirely unscreened to the forest beyond Jozankei, fed straight from the ground with no dilution, no reheating, no recirculation and no chlorine. Unusually for a day-use bath there is a free tatami hall, bookable private rooms and a genuinely good Indian curry restaurant, so a whole afternoon here is easy; the sparse buses from Sapporo are the weak point.

A therapeutic-bathing complex in the wooded Sukumo river valley above Yumoto, drawing on seven of its own sources with nothing stored and nothing added. The open-air rock baths look into trees rather than out at a view, but you can legitimately spend the whole day here.

A seven-room ryokan in the Nanasawa hills above Atsugi, built around a strongly alkaline 'beautiful skin' water that the owners call the most concentrated in Kanagawa, with the private family bath the only one fed undiluted straight from the spring. Day-use admission is capped at two hours and the open-air bath makes no claim to a view, so this is a trip made for the water rather than the scenery.

A suburban spa hotel built for staying put: seventeen baths on a certified therapeutic spring, six kinds of stone bath, a recliner lounge running from 10:00 to 9:00 the next morning, more than 10,000 comics, and a stated maximum stay of 35 hours in the building. Eight minutes on foot from JR Matsui-Yamate with free shuttles from four stations; there is no scenery at all, and that is not what it is for.