Where to stay in Wakayama

Three kinds of nightWhere to stay in Wakayama

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 Wakayama › 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 Wakayama is named below.

Looking for a room in Wakayama 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

Fukuchiin福智院 — Fu-ku-chi-in

This is the one to aim for in Wakayama, and it is not a hotel. It is a working Buddhist temple that takes guests, one of about fifty on Koyasan. Sixty rooms. Two things make this one the pick: it has the only natural hot spring on the mountain, and it has three gardens made by Shigemori Mirei, whose stone work is regarded internationally as among the best of the last century.

The morning service. You are woken early, you sit in the hall while the monks chant, and then you eat. Nobody is performing for visitors — this happens whether you are there or not, which is exactly why it is worth being there.
The food is shojin ryori — temple cooking with no meat and no fish. Koya tofu, sesame tofu, local wasabi. If you do not eat meat, this is one of the very few places in Japan where that is the default rather than a request.
The only natural hot spring on Koyasan is here. Every other lodging on the mountain has an ordinary bath. After a cold day at 800 metres this is the difference between a hard night and a good one.
Three gardens by a named garden maker, and you can sit and look at them. They are not on any coach route.

Where: In the temple town on Koyasan itself, at 800 metres. From Osaka: the Nankai line to Gokurakubashi, the cable car up in about five minutes, then a bus into the town.
Address: 657 Koyasan, Koya-cho, Ito-gun, Wakayama 648-0211
Telephone: 0736-56-2021
Booking: Through the official site, or the booking services below

Worth knowing

Arrive by mid-afternoon. Temple gates close early, the last cable car down is not late, and dinner is served at a fixed hour. A Japan Rail Pass covers none of the journey up here — Nankai is a private railway and the cable car is theirs. Nankai sells its own Koyasan tickets that come to less than the separate fares; buy before you board. Wi-Fi is in every room and the temple takes foreign guests routinely, so do not be put off by the idea of staying in a temple.

Checked 2026-08-17

MAP Call Official site

Where to stay & onsen