Sanjugariso

The owner kept a comfortable distance, guiding me without being too close or too hands-off. The meals brought back memories of eating at my grandma’s house as a child. I’d love to come back to this remote area for a hot spring cure and a digital detox.

This is a comfortable, very clean inn, and although the building is old, it’s well cared for and doesn’t feel run down. Wi-Fi is available and the signal is strong. One practical catch: payment is cash only, with no credit cards or other cashless options. There are no ATMs in Nozawa Onsen’s convenience stores. The Japan Post Bank ATM is at the agricultural cooperative, a five-minute walk away, and a Hachijuni Bank ATM is three doors down from there. It’s well placed for Nozawa Onsen’s public baths. The indoor bath is deep, hot, and very pleasant, with rinse-in shampoo and body soap provided. It stays open until 8:30 PM. The room came with a toothbrush, hairdryer, kettle, face and bath towels, yukata, jinbei, and hanten. I wore the jinbei with the hanten over it, took just a towel, and went around the public baths. There’s also a bidet toilet. The meals aren’t showy, but there are lots of dishes and it feels generous. Everything is homemade and delicious. They grow their own rice, and it tastes great with Nozawa greens. You can buy rice when it’s in season. Breakfast is at 7:30 AM and dinner at 6:00 PM. For skiing or snowboarding, tell them the night before and you can get discounted lift tickets. There’s a ski gear drying room and tuning station in the basement.

The landlady was very nice, but I was furious at her husband’s words and the way he spoke to me. I’d never experienced anything like it. I canceled my stay on the spot, and it was truly awful. What should have been a great memory became the worst one. I’ll never come to Nozawa Onsen again.

I’m sharing this because I want people to know what actually happened. I posted the same account on Jalan, where I booked, but the inn deleted it. This is a place I’d tell people to avoid. I was treated badly by the old owner, as other guests have described, and I was made to leave at 8am the next morning. I believe this broke our agreement, since checkout was supposed to be 11am, and I question whether it also violated the Inn and Hotel Business Act. I won’t return. If you see a negative Google Maps review with the same details, take it seriously. I called ahead to say I’d be a little late and would arrive at 10:30pm, and I got there exactly then. There was a note at the entrance telling me to go into the cherry blossom room, which seemed like a normal late-arrival note. But when we entered our second-floor room, an older man who seemed to be the innkeeper shouted from downstairs something like, “If you’re coming, you should come earlier.” At 11pm we planned to visit the outdoor baths. They generally close at 11pm, though most are open until around 1am, and we also wanted to try shot bars aimed at inbound tourists. The front door was locked with an 11pm curfew sign, so we had no choice but to sleep in our futons. In other Nozawa inns, they usually encourage guests to soak even in the middle of the night to ease their fatigue. The futon mattress felt like a rice cracker. The sheets were clean, but the cover underneath looked old and dirty, with several long strands of a woman’s hair stuck to it. I happened to bring a portable Airweave mattress and could sleep, but my older partner couldn’t sleep on the tatami. I also didn’t have a snow shovel for my car, and the innkeeper complained about it. At ski lodges, people normally ski until around 2am after checkout, while the lodge looks after the car and luggage. When I checked in at 8am, they suddenly told me to leave immediately because another guest was coming, and threw me out. It was the first time I’d been treated this way in Nozawa. Usually inns look after your car until around 1am so you can enjoy skiing, and if they need you to leave first thing in the morning, common sense is to tell you the day before. If it was going to snow heavily and they wanted luggage moved to the car, they could have prepared the night before. It felt extremely unkind. They didn’t even see me off. Other inns usually say goodbye and ask you to come again. I don’t expect guests to be treated like gods. I’ve always thought the relationship between an inn and its guests should be equal and friendly, but this left a bad impression and spoiled a precious ski holiday. The inn bought me a discounted lift ticket, but sternly insisted on advance payment even though I hadn’t said anything, and their reluctance was obvious. The ticket only costs a few thousand yen. Other inns let me pay at checkout, and some have even hurried to the inn association to buy one in time for the first lift when I wasn’t in a rush. Others have said the food is good, but to me it was average home cooking. The grilled fish was cheap, and breakfast rice was often left over from dinner, with an unpleasant smell. They mix in rice left over from several days ago too, and it’s discolored and smells bad. The rice others praised wasn’t anything special to me. Taste is subjective. It all comes down to how people treat you. I travel a lot for work and regularly stay everywhere from business hotels to Okura, Rihga, and Shokunin-yado, but I’ve never caused trouble for an inn. We weren’t having wild parties or anything, just keeping quiet. I won’t stay here again. Stubborn Showa-era grandpas may be something people are used to, but this was too much. It’s rare to find service this poor. The inn has no hospitality, and I felt they were telling me never to come back. It was just rude. If they’d treated me decently, I wouldn’t have written so much. The location is near downtown and the outdoor baths, but the 11pm curfew makes it hard to enjoy. I could understand being shouted at if we were middle or high school students on a school trip, but I hope the owner understands we were ordinary working adults on vacation. A couple having sex through thin walls in a cheap inn would of course disturb other guests, and I understand a stern warning in that situation. But I was skiing with friends, and the way we were treated made the ski trip disappointing. For families with children, the walk to the ski lift is long and difficult, possibly impossible for younger elementary school children and below.