Kagaya

Operating for more than a hundred years above Nanao Bay, Kagaya has long drawn Japan's Imperial household among its guests. The inn spreads across four connected buildings on the Wakura hot springs shore, holding 232 rooms in all. Rooms are built in the traditional style, with tatami floors and shoji screens dividing the space. Many face the water; some look instead toward the town side. It is a large operation for a ryokan. The Hamarikyu wing, the most formal of the four, gives every room a sea view and its own kaiseki dining room, drawing on Ishikawa's craft traditions in its fittings and tableware. Guests bathe in natural hot-spring water, some of it piped directly into private open-air tubs. A Noh theatre operates on site, alongside a koto lounge and a tea room. Meals follow a kaiseki format, built from seasonal ingredients drawn from the bay and the surrounding hills. Check-in runs from 3pm. The inn has been run by the same family across generations, and that continuity still shapes how it operates, down to the seasonal flower arrangements changed through the year in the corridors and public rooms.