Takahan Ryokan some of the author's personal effects. Takahan Ryokan Takahan Ryokan is an historic ryokan (Japanese inn) located in Yuzawa, Niigata Prefecture, Japan. The inn is over 800 years old. The inn has an onsen (bath) called "Tamago no Yu" (English: egg-water) that is supplied by natural hot springs with a slight amount of sulfur. The inn has approximately 20,000 annual visitors, many of whom visit to soak in Tamago no Yu. The setting for the book "Snow Country" authored by Yasunari Kawabata is based upon Takahan Ryokan's location. The inn has preserved the room that Kawabata stayed and wrote in
Blossom's Inn and was bordered with the hawthorn blossoms, which were a traditional adornment for such signs. The name was spelt in various other ways such as Bosom's Inn. These names were either a corruption of "blossom" or, perhaps, a fanciful alternative meaning as Deloney's "Thomas of Reading" says "Our jolly clothiers kept up their courage and went to Bosom's Inn, so called from a greasy old fellow who always went nudging with his head in his bosom..." Ben Jonson used this spelling in "Christmas, His Masque" with the lines, "But now comes Tom of Bosom's Inn, and he presenteth Misrule". When