chinman.com

The ryoken is old but our stay was comfortable. Not a big onsen bath but adequate, one of the bath is built underground. Maybe this is the reason that this ryoken is a member of secret onsen association 秘湯會員.

Dinner was served in the room but breakfast in a dining area. Foods are delicious and made by local produces.

Our ryoken is close to the end of the stream. Most of the buildings were built in Taisho era 大正年代. Sometimes a rather modern hotel was built to replace the old but the neighbour would oppose the architecture. They strives to preserve the tradition building style. Hence there we have this nice onsen village.

This series of pictures were taken from the beginning of the village to my ryoken, which is located close to the end of the onsen street.

The Ginzan Onsen buildings are built along the stream. Its style attracts a lot of tourists, both local and foreigners. It is also an Onsen area, you can see a foot onsen at the lower left corner of the third picture.

From Oishida train station to Ginzan Onsen, it took about half an hour. Almost every hotel therein offers shuttle bus for their guest. We arrived Ginzan at about 2:30pm.

Ginzan Onsen is a well preserved village. You may find it familiar as a Japanese animation movie  千與千尋 is using this place as a reference. We stayed in Notoya ryoken 能登屋旅館. This one is amongst the oldest one here. We booked it 5 month in advance by email. Although they are open for online reservation 2 months in advance but the room supply is very limited. We felt lucky to write an email to ask 5 months in advance and got their confirmation. As Japan started their long holiday, a lot of Japanese traveled around and I found that we were the only foreigner stayed in this ryoken.

The ryoken is tidy and traditional.

The way to go Ginzan Onsen was by train to Oishida station 大石田. Then you can take the bus or request the hotel to pick you up (if you would stay in a hotel). We arrived about an hour earlier so we went to have a walk in the city. We followed the city government's suggestion to visit their cultural museum. On the way to the museum we saw sakura falling.