Ikemoto

The place is affordable and very well located, with the tourist information centre right across the street and cafes, bars, restaurants and shops all around. It’s also in the middle of the stamp collecting area, if that’s something you want to do. The staff were lovely, always smiling and friendly, and breakfast was delicious. Free coffee was a nice touch. Our room was large, had fantastic views and a useful heater for this time of year. It was reasonably good overall, but the positives and negatives felt pretty evenly matched. The halls and waiting areas were really cold. The fish in the waiting area need bigger, cleaner tanks, I felt sorry for them. The bedsheets in our room had very large stains, and after the second night we had to stack the mattresses because I woke up with a very sore back. The toilets weren’t very nice either, and it was freezing in there. In the women’s bathroom there were two stalls, but one seemed out of order. The other had an awkward lock, like a piece was missing. I did try the onsen bath after first writing this review. It was nice, with a shower area and shampoo and body soap, which is a bonus compared with the free onsens nearby. Still, when there are so many free onsens around, making an onsen a required feature seems odd. The room itself felt like it wasn’t cleaned often enough. Right outside the bath was a smoking area with no door. Cigarette smoke often hurts my throat, and I was glad it wasn’t busy, since there was no divider between that area and the waiting spaces for the onsen, vending machines or coffee machines. A curtain there would help. Yukata and warm over layers were provided. The extra layer was nice, but my yukata had a massive hole and was a bit long on me, so my leg kept catching in it.