Hanamaki Onsen Itinerary: One to Three Nights

Nights, full days and costs

Arrival and departure days are outside the full-day count. For the main route, two adults share one Koyokan room for two nights.

• Accommodation:

  from US$140 per room / night

• Kenji entries: ¥550 (about US$3.50) per adult for a combined ticket to Kenji’s School and the Memorial Museum.
• Yumoto–Hanamaki Station bus: ¥510 (about US$3.20) per adult each way.

Accommodation and Kenji admission per adult:

• School and Memorial Museum (main route): about US$144 per adult.
• School only, if you skip the Memorial Museum: about US$143 per adult.

Both subtotals exclude transport, meals and other activities.

Additional costs: the Tsuchizawa Line bus to the Kenji sites, travel to and from Hanamaki, food, taxis, extra day baths and other attraction tickets. These costs are outside the accommodation and entry prices above.

A single overnight stop

With one night, you can bathe at the hotel and walk in daylight through Hanamaki Onsen Shrine’s torii or the woods beside Kamabuchi Falls. During winter snow, you may prefer more time indoors at the inn.

Arrival afternoon in Yumoto

Overnight guests can reserve the hotel guest shuttle from Hanamaki or Shin-Hanamaki Station to Yumoto. Reserve before arrival. Public buses also run to the resort. Koyokan’s 10-tatami Japanese room sleeps up to five guests, and every guest room faces the mountains. The five-guest category has its own rate.

In the Rose Garden, roses surround a fountain and grow beside Kenji’s sundial flowerbed. You can also see the garden illuminated on seasonal evenings from summer into autumn.

Hotel Koyokan

Mountain-view rooms and outdoor rock and pot baths in Yumoto’s resort grounds.

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from US$140 per room / night

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The full day: Miyazawa Kenji

At Dowa Mura, you walk through Kenji’s fairy-tale settings. In Kenji’s School, you enter Fantastic Hall before rooms devoted to space, sky, earth and water. The log-house Classrooms and the grounds are free. At the nearby Memorial Museum, you can see Kenji’s belongings and manuscripts, watch videos and browse books.

From Yumoto, take the Hanamaki Onsen Line to Hanamaki Station. From Hanamaki Station, the Tsuchizawa Line takes about 17 minutes to Kenji Kinenkan-guchi. Dowa Mura is five minutes on foot from the stop. For the Memorial Museum, you climb 367 stairs from the bus stop.

• Dowa Mura hours: 09:00–16:30.
• Dowa Mura weekly closure: normally Monday.
• Memorial Museum weekly closure: normally Tuesday.

You can usually visit both from Wednesday to Sunday. Public holidays can shift the closing days, and both facilities close at New Year and for maintenance. Ishidoriya’s brewing museum is an alternative when the Kenji sites are closed.

The extra day: Ishidoriya and Takamura

The Nanbu Sake Master Brewer Museum is about 15 minutes by car from Hanamaki Onsen. Inside the reconstructed earthen-walled sake storehouse, you can see brewing tools and a vat about two meters across.

• Museum admission: free.
• Paid tastings: cash only, until 16:00.
• Museum closing time: 16:30.

Later, you can see sculptures and Chieko’s paper pictures at the Takamura museum and cottage. The poet lived in the hut for seven and a half years.

• Adult admission: ¥350 (about US$2.20) for each building.
• Closures: normally Mondays and New Year.

For a day farther afield, you can visit Hiraizumi’s pond garden and gilded temple hall, the museums and old farmhouses in Tono, or Morioka’s granite castle walls and riverside streets. Each destination takes the place of the Ishidoriya and Takamura day.