Where to stay in Tochigi

Three kinds of nightWhere to stay in Tochigi

The choice is really about what kind of night you want. A hot-spring inn feeds you twice and stops you moving. A city hotel is the right answer if you are arriving late or leaving early.

A ryokan or hot-spring inn旅館・温泉宿

Dinner and breakfast brought to you, a bath, and floor bedding laid out while you eat. The price is per person and includes both meals.

Includes 2 meals Book ahead

See ryokan and onsen inns › How an onsen works

A city hotelホテル

Clean, small, reliable and priced per room. Right for early trains, late arrivals and anyone travelling with a large suitcase.

Per roomNear the station

See hotels in Tochigi › Getting around

A guesthouse or minshuku民宿・ゲストハウス

Family-run, cheaper, and often the only option in the countryside.

Ask about cashRural areas

See guesthouses and minshuku ›

Our first choice in Tochigi is named below.

Looking for a room in Tochigi tonight?

MAP How an onsen works

BookingSix things worth asking before you pay

Ask about these

Meals: Whether dinner and breakfast are included, and what time dinner is served. Inns often serve at a fixed time and will not wait
Tattoos: Ask whether the bath admits them, and ask about a private bath
Private bath: Kashikiri. Many inns have one, and it removes the question of bathing with strangers entirely
Payment: Card or cash. Rural inns are often cash only
Arrival time: Tell them. Inns lock up earlier than hotels
Luggage: They will hold it before check-in and after check-out. Just ask

What a night at an inn is like

Shoes: Off at the entrance. Slippers inside; nothing on the straw matting
The robe: A cotton yukata is provided and is worn to dinner and to the bath. Left side over right
Dinner: Many small dishes, often in your room or a dining room at a set time
Bedding: Laid out on the floor, usually while you are eating
Bathing: Before dinner and again before bed is normal here
Breakfast: Rice, fish, egg, pickles. Ask the night before if you need it early

How an onsen works

Our first choice hereThe one we would book

Nikko Kanaya Hotel日光金谷ホテル — Ka-na-ya

This is the one to aim for in Tochigi, and it is the oldest resort hotel still running in Japan. It opened in 1873, when Nikko was where foreign residents came to escape the summer, and it has been taking guests on the same slope ever since. Around sixty rooms. The carving inside the building was done by the same trades that kept the shrines up the hill in repair.

Toshogu opens at eight and the coaches arrive from mid-morning. Walking up from here takes about fifteen minutes, so you can be inside the gate before the first party arrives — and the carvings need quiet more than they need light.
The hotel itself is the second reason to come. Hand-carved doors, a dining room that has been serving the same rainbow trout for generations, and a guest book with a great many names in it. You are sleeping in the building, not beside it.
Nikko is a mountain town, not a suburb of Tokyo. It is about two hours out and a thousand metres higher — bring a layer even in summer, and expect the last part of the day to be cold in autumn.
The waterfall and the lake are further up, on a road of switchbacks. Staying overnight is what lets you do the shrines in the morning and the mountain in the afternoon instead of choosing.

Where: On the slope above the river in Nikko — about fifteen minutes on foot to Toshogu, or five minutes by taxi from either Nikko station
Address: 1300 Kami-hatsuishi-machi, Nikko, Tochigi 321-1401
Telephone: 0288-54-0001
Booking: Through the official site, or the booking services below

Worth knowing

Ask for a room in the main building when you book if the age of the place is why you are coming — the annexes are newer, and it costs nothing to say so when you book.

Checked 2026-08-17

MAP Call Official site

Where to stay & onsen