Where to Stay in Shimobe Onsen
下部温泉 · 3 inns bookable in English, from $88 a night
Shimobe is a small, quiet spring in the hills south of Kofu, fourteen inns in a narrow valley. It is the most documented of the springs associated with Takeda Shingen, and the only one where the association rests on a surviving document rather than a story.
The connection
"Shingen's hidden baths" are a genre. Yamanashi Prefecture's own library says plainly that there is no settled list, and that the name attached itself to springs as Shingen's reputation grew. Shimobe is the exception. Shingen ordered Anayama Nobutomo to take charge of the spring, and that order survives — held at the inn Koyubo Gensenkan, whose Kakushiyu Oiwa Buro is a fifteen-mat bath fed straight from the rock. So of all the inns in Japan claiming Shingen bathed there, this is the one with paperwork.
Here is the awkward part, and we would rather say it than let you find out at the booking stage. Koyubo Gensenkan — the inn holding the document — is not listed on Rakuten's English site. We checked the area listing on two separate dates and searched by name; the only matches were unrelated properties in Tochigi and Gunma. Go and see it. Book through the inn directly, or stay at one of the three Shimobe properties that are available in English. If you want a straightforward booking with a Takeda connection, Yumura Onsen outside Kofu is the better bet — prefectural material describes it as having served the Takeda house, and six of its inns are bookable.
Getting there, and when
Shimobe Onsen station is on the Minobu line. The valley is small and walkable. Combine with Kofu for the Takeda Shrine at the Tsutsujigasaki residence site, and Erinji, Shingen's funerary temple.
The inns of Shimobe Onsen
Prices are the lowest seen for two people, one night, on 2027-03-12, checked 2026-10-26. They move with the date — treat them as a rough floor, not a quote. Japanese inns are listed under romanised names that often differ from the signs outside them, so these link straight to the inn rather than to a search. What the booking page looks like.
Mentioned in this article but not bookable in English
- Koyubo Gensenkan (古湯坊源泉館)
Not found on the English site. Checked as an area listing on two dates and by name search, which returned only unrelated properties in Tochigi and Gunma. This is the inn that holds the order placing Shimobe under Anayama Nobutomo's management. Mention it in the text, link to its own site, and do not promise a booking.
See what is available in Shimobe Onsen
3 inns were bookable in English on the date checked. Availability shifts: a check four months earlier returned a partly different list, so this is what was open then rather than a fixed roster. Availability moves quickly at smaller inns, and weekends book out first.