How Many Days Do You Need in Kinosaki Onsen?

Kinosaki Onsen Packs a Lot Into a Small Town

At its core, Kinosaki Onsen is, of course, an onsen town. It is home to seven onsens open for visitors, and guests staying at local hotels and ryokans tend to get an all-access pass to check out the onsen as they like, including a generous amount of time to enjoy the hot springs on your departure day, too.

Naturally, it should go without saying that hitting upwards of seven onsen in a single day is a lot and, while doable, is often best spread out over multiple days if you can make it work. On our first night after arriving, we hit two, and then we hit four more the following day, plus a return to our favorite one more time- and we were packing it in!

But what really shocked us about the town was just how much more there was to do beyond soaking in a natural hot spring bath seven times over.

Kinosaki Onsen is famous for its local food, with seasonal snow crab in the winter months and tajima beef found on many menus. The small town has a disproportionately large number of delicious restaurants, izakaya, and bars, including local beer and sake (so much so that we almost turned our onsen experience into an onsen pub crawl). The nearby mountain top can be hiked up to visit shrines or, more comfortably, via cable car. It is home to several local artisans, including their famous straw craft production. And the ocean is not too far away, either!

These are just a few of the many things that we found available in Kinosaki Onsen that we had to balance our time around outside of visiting all the onsen.

While we think we gave the town a nice cross-section, we also admit we missed out on so much. In particular, we only got to try snow crab once. We tried tajima beef cooked over hot coals once, and missed out on other forms (tajima burger, I’m looking at you). We didn’t even get to enjoy the onsen in our hotel, nor any of their homecooked meals, either.

It was really go go go, relax relax, go go, relax, repeat, depart.

So, while we will argue that two nights is the minimum you need to enjoy Kinosaki Onsen, the real answer is that more is always better if you can justify it.

Two Nights is the Minimum, More is Better

So, you may be wondering, why exactly is two nights a minimum at Kinosaki Onsen? Depending on how you read the above, you may be thinking you could do it all in one over night and a late train departure the next day.

Going beyond the fact that it simply would be incredibly busy to pack in all of the onsen and all the associated amenities in the town in a single night, there is one very important reason why we settled on two for our visit- the onsens are not open every day of the week.

Simply put, in any given day of the week, one onsen in Kinosaki Onsen is likely to be closed. While this seemed to be on weekdays only, with all onsen open on weekends, we cannot say whether this will change (check Visit Kinosaki to confirm!). But we can say that we visited on weekdays, so we knew that at least one onsen would be closed each day of our visit.

When we said we hit two on our first day and four on our second day, we were, naturally, strategic to ensure that we hit the onsen that would be closed on the alternative day.

Going beyond this, Goshono-Yu onsen, arguably one of the most popular due to its unique outdoor space, also swaps sides by gender each day. On our first day, the left side was open for men, and the right side was for women. On our second day, they were flipped. As this one was also our favorite, we wanted to ensure we could see both sides. (For those curious- they’re similar but different in some minor ways. Worth going back to again if you have the time, but you won’t be missing out if you can’t. Admittedly, I did like the left side better.)

Likewise, we really wanted to ride the cable car up the nearby mountain to get views of the ocean and to check out the shrines and on our first day it was closed due to slightly windy conditions in the area. If you only had one day and the weather was poor for whatever reason, well, you may have to climb instead.

Ultimately, we have to go back to the fact that this resort town has far too many amenities and experiences, the seven onsen included. If you are like us, the odds are good you’re visiting as an escape to relax and not to continue the normal go-go pace of other cities in Japan. With just two nights, you may get to relax a fair bit, but you’ll likely be pushing things pretty hard all the same.

It is because of this reason that we wish we had at least three nights at Kinosaki Onsen, and, had we had enough time to travel at a much slower pace, we probably would’ve stayed four or more just to have more time to unwind, eat, drink, soak, day trip, all while pacing out our onsen experience to perhaps our favorite two each day as the trip went on.

Some places are just too amazing where we simply want to be at for a while just because it is that nice. Kinosaki Onsen is one of those places. It is because of that, we simply have to say, you’re going to want an extra night from whatever you’re likely planning. We did.

To check out hotel and ryokan options in Kinosaki Onsen, click here.