LiVEMAX RESORT Kinugawa

I usually don’t leave reviews, but I have to share this one. If you’re a foreigner, you might want to try another hotel in the area. The hotel and rooms are a little old, though I didn’t mind that, and it was clean. I really enjoyed the private onsen with a beautiful view of autumn greenery, but that was the only good part of the stay. The food was okay, nothing special. They seemed to be trying to raise its quality with more premium items like snow crab, but of the five hotels of a similar level I’ve stayed at in Japan, this one’s food was near the bottom for taste. The staff were very uncooperative. Some of them weren’t Japanese, mainly at reception, and they made little effort to speak English. They didn’t arrange takkyubin, so we had to do it ourselves. They looked at us strangely when we asked them to call a taxi to a train station 21 minutes away because we didn’t want to walk the whole way with lots of travel ahead. After we asked them to at least try, they made one call and said after about five seconds that none was available. Yet ten minutes later, as we were leaving, a taxi was in the hotel parking lot picking up a Japanese guest. It felt like the staff simply didn’t want to deal with foreigners. The Japanese staff were actually kind and welcoming, but they weren’t at reception. Think twice about the location if you don’t have a car. We thought luggage delivery, takkyoubin, would make it manageable to walk from the train stations with just backpacks, about 20-30 minutes, but I wouldn’t recommend it now. It’s possible, but there isn’t always a sidewalk, October sunsets are already around 5 p.m., and rain would make it a pain. The hotel has no shuttle car, which is standard for hotels this far from stations. The nearest bus or shuttle stop is at Edo Wonderland, a 15-minute walk away, though that shuttle does go to Nikko. Getting a taxi from Nikko to the hotel, about a 20-minute drive, was no problem. The return trip was harder. With little help from staff, you have to figure out the travel yourself, and account for possibly walking about 30 minutes with luggage beside a busy road that sometimes has no sidewalk. The overall stay was okay, and we’d even planned for the walk, but we really didn’t appreciate how the situations were handled. I’m from central Europe and used to people not smiling or bowing, as long as there’s basic politeness and respect. Even so, I felt awful after speaking with staff, as if we were a burden wasting their time when it wasn’t even busy, or stupid for not knowing Japanese, how to fill out takkyoubin forms in Japanese, or how busy taxis are there. How would we know? That’s their job, to know this information and share it with guests. It says a lot about the non-Japanese staff’s unprofessionalism, especially in Japan, where I’d have expected the opposite.