Aoni Onsen

Aoni Onsen is one inn, Lamp no Yado Aoni Onsen, at the bottom of the Aoni valley in the mountains east of Kuroishi. The poet Niwa Yogaku opened it in 1929, and it still runs on lamplight. The inn says power came in only about 25 years ago, to run the emergency lights, and that even now only part of the kitchen, the fridges and the toilet seats are electric. Rooms have no electric light, no TV and no air conditioning, and mobile phones get no signal. Staff look after nearly 200 lamps every day in a lamp shed and carry them out on poles toward evening. Dinner is in the big hall by lamplight; give your eyes a few minutes. There are four baths, all clear simple-spring water flowing straight from the source: Kenroku-no-Yu, built of hiba wood and open 24 hours for overnight guests; the indoor bath in the main building; Takimi-no-Yu, which looks out on a waterfall; and a mixed rock-built outdoor bath by the river with women-only hours. There is no shampoo or hair dryer. Getting here is the trade-off. From April to November it is a bus plus the inn's shuttle, or about 30 minutes by car from the Kuroishi interchange. From December to March the road from Route 102 down to the inn is closed to private cars, and the shuttle is the only way in.