Okko's Inn (若おかみは小学生！) is a series of Japanese children's novels, written by Hiroko Reijō and illustrated by Asami. Kodansha released twenty volumes between 2003 and 2013 under the Aoi Tori Bunko imprint. A manga adaptation with art by Eiko Ōuchi was serialized in Kodansha's shōjo manga Nakayoshi and collected in seven tankōbon volumes.
Plot
One March, Oriko "Okko" Seki with her parents Shoji and Sakiko travel to Hananoyu's ritual dance for an annual Shinto spring festival celebrating the hot springs. After surviving a car accident where her parents are killed, Okko moves in with her grandmother Mineko at the Harunoya Inn, a ryokan in Hananoyu hot spa town in the shadow of Mount Ikoma in Kongō-Ikoma-Kisen Quasi-National Park near Osaka. There, the gawky and creature-shy young girl befriends the ghost of a boy named Makoto "Uribo" Tachiuri, the late childhood friend and one-time next-door neighbour of Mineko. Uribo convinces Okko into becoming the junior innkeeper for her grandmother. At first, she finds her job exhausting and it hard to do it all wearing a formal kimono, but Uribo encourages her to do well.
At school, Okko meets Matsuki Akino — nicknamed Frilly Pink — a snobbish and haughty girl with a pink lolita fashion sense, whose family runs Shuko Ryokan at Hananoyu, a competing inn, but considerably larger and more up-market. Uribo tries to provoke Matsuki by painting her face, but a blond girl ghost retaliates by painting Okko's. Later, the ghost reveals herself to be Miyo, Matsuki's late sister, who died before the latter was born.