Hotel Amuze Shin Yamaguchi

We found it to be a good-value business hotel, mainly aimed at male business travelers, I thought. We had a double room. I used the large public bath, while my wife used the bathroom in our room. The bath also has a sauna, and I found it very comfortable. Breakfast was Japanese style, so I wonder whether guests who want bread might find that an issue. There's parking behind the hotel, and the front desk can direct you to a space.

The biggest concern for me was the wet towels people hang over the sauna heater enclosure to dry. If a towel falls onto the stove, it would be extremely hard to remove because of the heat and height. I'm worried one could eventually catch fire and cause an accident. I hope the hotel takes the Sauna Tiger accident as a lesson and strictly bans this behavior, for people's safety. The building is a little old but well kept, and the service is polite. A night with breakfast costs just 5,500 yen and includes the large public bath and sauna, which is very cheap. But day visitors use the bath too, and many locals were loud and had poor manners.

The sauna itself was only lukewarm, and even though I went right at opening time, the towel mats were already soaked. The regular crowd, mostly older men, gets pretty noisy. As a sauna it's just so-so, but I guess it's a popular local hangout.

I came for a day visit before an away soccer game. At 3 p.m. on Saturday I expected a crowd, but there were only four or five people ahead of me, so I got lucky. It cost just 750 yen with a towel, and being close to the station was great. There's nowhere to recline and no outdoor bath, so you can't linger. That may help keep it from getting too crowded.