The Top 17 Hotels Near Restaurant Naz
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Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Okuchichibu mountains from every room, which is the whole argument for making the trip from Tokyo. This intimate mountain resort from the Hiramatsu group keeps the room count deliberately low, so the hot-spring baths and the views stay uncrowded. Multiple lounges invite a hi-fi listening session or an afternoon with an art book while the seasons shift outside. The Michelin Guide has awarded it 2 Keys.
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Three buildings by Pritzker laureates Shigeru Ban and Ryue Nishizawa spread through the Nagano forest an hour from Tokyo, which is a significant architectural flex for a hotel. Rooms run from Western to tatami, the restaurant serves French-Japanese cuisine built around local and seasonal produce, and there's a dedicated architecture library for when the trees lose their novelty. It holds a Michelin Key.
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A modern ryokan from the well-regarded Fufu brand, set in eastern Nagano with Mount Asama visible on the horizon. Living plants fill every room and corridor, so the surrounding greenery doesn't stay outside. The hot springs run with calcium-sodium sulfate water, and the restaurant leans into a Japanese take on French cooking using whatever the season is handing the kitchen. It holds a Michelin Key.
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At the foot of a volcano, which really does set the mood, this boutique hotel in the Karuizawa mountains threads Japanese architectural detail through a quietly stylish international frame. The 155 rooms lean into the forest setting, some with garden patios, some with woodland views from the tub. A Thai-style spa by HARNN handles relaxation; the single all-day restaurant, Kagaribi, handles meals with, of all things, an Italian accent.
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A stream runs through the property, wild birds nest in the forest outside your window, and some floors are heated by the geothermal spring below your feet. This ryokan-inspired resort sits about an hour from Tokyo in the hills around Karuizawa, built around an onsen and a small lake, with contemporary villas that manage to feel genuinely quiet. The spa, the kaiseki dining room, and most of the guest terraces all face the trees.
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A Michelin Key-holding luxury ryokan-style resort sitting beside Kumoba Pond in the Karuizawa highlands, where the forest does most of the therapeutic work before you've even checked in. Rooms run warm via underfloor heating and wood stoves, and the hot spring baths handle the rest. The design is sleek and contemporary, the restaurant leans into regional Shinshu cuisine, and the whole operation is quiet enough that you'll forget the train exists.
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A 12-room auberge in the Yatsugatake Mountains that looks, improbably, like it was airlifted from Paris and set down facing mountain peaks instead of the Left Bank. Rooms tuck under mansard rooflines with the proportions that a rural setting makes possible, and the in-house restaurant keeps a cellar of 2,000 French bottles. The owner built it as a tribute to French hospitality, and the result is a hotel that has no obvious counterpart anywhere in Japan.
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A Nagano valley ryokan whose name translates as "wind through the trees in the mountains," which tells you exactly the kind of stay they're selling. The main draw is a series of baths, indoor, outdoor, communal, and private, that the region has been perfecting for centuries. Rooms are traditional Japanese style: tatami, translucent screens, low furnishings, arabesque archways, and dark wood throughout. A lounge bar opens onto a garden for the intervals between soaks. It holds a Michelin Key.
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Three natural hot spring baths face the forested mountainsides of Yatsugatake National Park, open around the clock and framed by nothing but trees. This classic ryokan, half an hour outside Matsumoto, keeps its rooms spare by design: tatami, shoji screens, and floor-to-ceiling views do all the work. Some rooms add a private open-air onsen bath. A shuttle runs to and from the station, which is two and a half hours from Tokyo and feels like considerably more.
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A Lawrence Weiner mural runs across the facade of this design hotel in Maebashi, which tells you immediately what kind of stay this is. Architect Sou Fujimoto transformed a 1970s concrete block into something closer to a contemporary art museum with rooms, including a Leandro Erlich installation filling the atrium. A newer green tower shaped after the nearby mountains is its own sculpture. The founder of Japanese eyewear brand JINS envisioned it as a living room for the whole city.
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Every room at this ryokan-adjacent retreat in Asama Onsen comes with its own private spring-fed bath, which freed up the old communal soaking hall to become a restaurant, café, bakery, bookshop, and shop. The bones of the original inn, an old-school fixture of this resort town, survived the redesign even if what stands now looks quietly modern. The name translates loosely as "ten stories," referring to chapters of history rather than floors.
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The only Keith Haring museum in the world is here, not in New York, tucked into the foothills of the Yatsugatake Mountains. The boutique hotel next door, designed by the same Japanese architect, has just six rooms named for natural elements, minimalist wood-and-stone interiors, private balconies over the forest, and hot-spring baths open to the night sky. The Michelin Guide selects it among its hotels.
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A thatched-roof farmhouse shaped by generations of local craft sits deep in the Togakushi mountains, and the other option is a stripped-back former public hall that sleeps just two. This small ryokan-style stay is built around "yui," the old rural mutual-aid philosophy, which means the pace here is unhurried by design. Forest walks, mountain shrines, and meals from local ingredients fill the days. The Michelin Guide has it among its Selected Hotels.
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The long main corridor bends in a gentle arc, one side all rooms, the other a continuous double-height window of forest, like an aquarium tunnel where the sharks have been traded for greenery. This contemporary ryokan in Minakami's onsen country holds a Michelin Key, and the baths, open on multiple sides to surrounding trees and mountain air, are the real argument for coming. Rooms run tatami, Western, or a blend of both.
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A wine concierge and a cellar stocked with Nagano's boutique vintages set the tone at this sleek alpine hotel near Hakuba's ski runs. Corner suites come with open kitchens, elegant stemware already waiting, and a freestanding soaking tub angled toward picture windows, which turns out to be a reasonable argument for one more run. French and teppanyaki dining pairs with Japanese craft wines downstairs.
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Each of the six suites in this boutique ski lodge is named for a Finn Juhl furniture piece, so you sleep in the Chieftain Chair room or the Poet Sofa room, which is exactly as considered as it sounds. The Onecollection furniture company converted an old Hakuba ski lodge into a quietly stunning argument for Danish modernism meeting Japanese craft, with Georg Jensen linens, organic bath products, and Alps views from the bar.
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An open-air onsen with forest views sets the tone at this all-seasons mountain resort in the Japanese Alps, where 25 acres of gardens buffer you from the ski crowds even when the slopes are packed. Rooms lean into the woodland-lodge feel with timber accents; suites add balcony jacuzzis. Winter brings French-course dinners and a Japanese dining room focused on Kobe beef, while breakfast runs American or Japanese depending on your mood.