Yamanaka Onsen Ohanami Kyubei

I enjoyed staying at this very nice ryokan. The staff were extremely friendly and helpful, and the facilities were great. Both the open-air and public baths were clean, with lots of extra free stuff. The rooms could use a bit of refreshing and maintenance, and I’d have liked more food variety. I stayed 5 days and ended up eating the same things day after day. The food was great, but after a while I lost interest.

I hate leaving bad hotel reviews, and I spent a lot of time researching because I didn’t want this to happen while spending my hard-earned money on vacation. Still, I wouldn’t recommend this hotel to anyone looking for an authentic or enjoyable onsen stay. We had two separate room reservations for rooms pictured with updated bathrooms and wooden tubs. Instead, we got an old room with a very outdated bathroom. The toilet was filthy when we arrived, with visible hair and even feces on it. Staff admitted they’d given our room to someone else and said they’d move us, but they never did. We’d paid for breakfast but skipped it because the quality was extremely poor. Some toiletries were mislabeled or had the wrong product inside. For example, the bottle marked “toner” contained conditioner. I raised the issue with Booking.com, but the hotel told them we’d been given the room we booked. That contradicted both the online photos and what staff had told us in person. The stay was disappointing and unhygienic, and didn’t match what was advertised. If you want an authentic onsen hotel experience, I strongly recommend booking elsewhere.

The free activities were fun, and there was ice cream in the evening. The rooms were ordinary, nothing special, and they make the beds while you’re eating dinner. The floors smelled bad, and if you opened the window, the smell from outside hit your stomach. The bathroom felt like it was from the Showa era. The bath was normal, but there were no amenities in the room. You even had to take your towels from the hall. Dinner was a buffet, which I’d never seen at a ryokan before. I want to relax, not stand in food lines, and I’ll be extra cautious about buffet-style ryokan in the future. Breakfast was better, but the ontama was overcooked or had been sitting out for a long time. The inn itself was just a normal ryokan onsen. Dinner choices were available if you booked through the hotel’s homepage. If you booked through Booking, you got what the others didn’t like. I found that unacceptable. We’d discussed the shuttle and parking a month before arrival, and they didn’t mention the meal options then or at check-in. They blamed Booking and said it should offer the choices, but the hotel could have written one sentence about the options. They don’t care. You can arrive between 3 and 6, but if you get there at 3, you might wait up to an hour to check in. If you show up close to 6, there’s almost no time to try the free activities, and no information about that was given beforehand. I have nothing against foreigners, being one myself, but when I choose a traditional inn in the countryside, I don’t want to see so many foreigners, let alone Muslims. Just not in Japan in a ryokan. Choose a different hotel, really.

The onsens were all beautiful, and we had a really nice breakfast and dinner. We stayed for two nights, four people in a traditional room. The staff speak English, and most of the other guests were Japanese. Yukatas were included.