Ryokan Azumaya

A great, genuine ryokan with a bath and really nice staff. The prices were even lower than some capsule hotels in Japan. It’s a great choice if you want a stay that gives you that Kyoto feeling and still leaves plenty of money for exploring and having fun. Highly recommend.

This ryokan was a good fit for a budget trip. It was affordable, fairly central, and around a 10-minute walk from Kyoto Station. There’s also a bus line close by, handy when your feet are tired. I’d recommend it completely. One thing to know: they ask you to leave the room key with them when you go out for the day. That could be inconvenient if you’re out partying late, though I didn’t mind having one less thing to keep track of.

I paid about $350 for one night and still wasn’t comfortable. Traffic kept passing on the big main street beside the hotel all night, and the noise was so loud through the window that I couldn’t sleep. The window doesn’t block the sound at all. The bathroom is very small, and the room is small too. It smelled a bit old when we walked in, with lots of sticker patches on the wall. The tatami pad was thin and felt very hard on my back. The room needs renovating.

The public bath was pretty good, and I liked the view from the window. Still, the first impression shaped how I felt about the place. Staff didn’t escort us to our rooms, which had been a required procedure at other ryokan I’ve stayed in, and there was a large stain in the room that spoiled the stay for me. From my point of view, this was the worst ryokan I’ve ever stayed at. I hope we were the only ones who had these problems.