Hotel Nampuro, Shimabara, Japan

Hotel Nampuro is an onsen hotel located in Shimabara in Nagasaki Prefecture. We have visited this hotel’s onsen spa a number of times on day trips and find the spa facility here to be one of the nicest we have visited in Japan. In addition to its varied onsen and saunas, there are other attractions that make this a great place to stay, especially for young families and those looking for a fun and stimulating environment with great ocean views.

https://www.nampuro.com/

The lobby where guests check in resembles a library with books and magazines on shelves everywhere. While there are some manga, most of the books and magazines are not. After checking in, we walked around the corner to another large book shelved area with a long self-service beverage counter providing a variety coffee, teas, soft drinks, with beer and shochu hi-balls on tap, as well as snacks including mixed nuts and a fridge with a few flavors of ice cream that you can scoop yourself. All drinks, except coffee and tea, and snacks are provided free of charge from 3 to 6 pm, while coffee and tea are available for free 24/7. With extensive and comfortable seating, we sat down to browse these books (very few are in English) and enjoyed a few draft beers with nuts and then filled some paper cups with beverages and snacks that we took to our room. 

While some rooms have an in-room onsen bath, we booked a room without since we prefer to use their extensive common onsen/spa facility. One particular feature of this hotel is that all rooms have a ceiling-mounted projector that projects a wide selection of Japanese and English Netflix movies onto the room’s wall. Of course, this is in addition to a TV, so it is tailored to a young, wired demographic that favors a multimedia experience to the traditional sedate onsen ryokan experience of their parents’ and grandparents’ generation. After a relaxing bath and dinner, we retired to our room to watch some large-screen movies from the extensive Netflix library. If watching movies is your thing, you might want to take it easy on all the free alcoholic beverages as they will likely put you to sleep, and you’ll miss them. 

Traditional onsen ryokan normally have only an onsen bath but over the years onsen hotels have sprung up that also include a wide variety of onsen baths and saunas, often referred to today in Japan as spas. As such, Hotel Nampuro’s onsen is often considered a spa. It’s extensive spa with infinity ocean views is the centerpiece of the hotel experience. The spa is divided into an indoor and outdoor (roofed but open air) component. The indoor spa consists of numerous personal washing stalls, two hot baths, a dry sauna, a small 2-person Finnish sauna, a mist sauna, and a cold bath. The outdoor spa includes six different baths, a sauna, three cold baths, and wooden decks with chairs and recliners. The large central stone bath opens on to an infinity view of the Ariaki Sea with Kumamoto on its opposite shore. All baths including the cold baths (which often contain only tap water) contain natural spring water. After a couple of hours using these facilities, you’ll be well prepared for the “all-you-can-drink” fest at dinner time.

https://www.nampuro.com/spa/

Like most onsen, the room rate includes dinner and breakfast, with dinner offered at staggered times to avoid crowding. The dining room was spacious, and I was surprised to learn that alcoholic beverages were all self-serve nomihodai (all-you-can-drink) and included in the room rate at no extra charge. The dinner was a very solid kaiseki-style meal with good local seafood that was complimented by a choice of draft Asahi beer, hot or cold sake, shochu, wine, whiskey, and non-alcoholic selections as well.

Breakfast was served in the same room but was buffet style with an omelet station. I’m not especially fond of buffet meals as I find it difficult to not overeat and I would have preferred a set breakfast served at the table. The buffet was extensive and included mabo-dofu and sara-udon, which are breakfast buffet staples in Nagasaki Prefecture, as well as the ubiquitous curry rice, miso soup, natto, salad, and numerous other items. 

Since most everything after check-in is self-service, guests have the run of the house and interact minimally with staff except at dinner. Dinner staff were friendly and very helpful and always seemed to be there when you needed them. Check-in staff were also very friendly, helpful, and outgoing. 

There are two outdoor pools, one specifically for kids and the other apparently for adults. Next to the pool are some sauna tents and a jacuzzi. There’s a co-working space next to the lobby with free wifi with five working booths and a worktable with chairs for those who need or want to work during their stay.

On the ground floor in a room next to the beverage counter is a game room, mostly geared toward kids but accessible by anyone to play foosball, pool, and some arcade-style games.

The hotel is dog friendly and permits one dog to stay in each room. There is also a dog track where dogs are free to run and play. In addition, there are two goats who live on the premises outdoors, and next to their huts is a large box containing cabbage leaves that guests can feed to the goats. 

Shimabara is near the geothermal hot springs resort area of Unzen in Kyushu. It is also a historical city with interesting tourist sites such as Shimabara Castle and was the locus of the famous Shimabara Rebellion in 1637 to 1638 of local Ronin and Catholic peasants against the repressive policies of the Tokugawa Shogunate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimabara_Rebellion).

There is a car ferry that runs multiple times daily between Shimabara and Kumamoto, so Shimabara would make an interesting stop on a tour of Kyushu by car. 

There’s a lot to do at the hotel, quite a bit more than we needed, but for a family with kids (and a dog), it might be ideal, as it is very resort-like and permeated with a feeling of levity and fun.  Still, we only wanted the onsen/spa with two meals, so the included in-room projector for movies and the nomihodai at dinner time were pleasant surprises, but other things we never used (game room, co-working space, etc.). That said, its onsen/spa with incredible ocean view is top-notch, and with the in-room multimedia experience thrown in, it’s a cost- and feature-competitive onsen hotel well worth a try.