Tsubaki

Having a private onsen in our room was wonderful, and the food was very good too. We left feeling quite full. As a foreigner, I appreciated the extra effort everyone made to understand each other. The pickup from the station was really convenient.

We booked the executive suite to have the full traditional experience, including our own onsen. Dinner came to our room as a multi-course meal, and breakfast was a Kaiseki served there as well. Both the food and its presentation were amazing. Over our two-week visit, Japan gave us plenty of great memories, but this was our favourite. It’s definitely an experience worth having!

We’d heard that Sekiyou, Yui, and Tsubaki are considered Yugawara’s top three luxury hotel spas. Tsubaki was the one we hadn’t visited, so, since reporting on Yugawara restaurants and hotels is our mission, we decided to try it. We live in Yugawara and have a spa at home, so this was just a day visit for dinner and a bath. The price was a shock: more than 32,000 yen per person without an overnight stay. Two people can normally stay at a hotel spa with dinner and breakfast for 32,000 yen. The building makes a strong first impression. The entrance and lobby are grand, and the courtyard, rooms, and interior were all beautiful and very clean. The bath was spacious and relaxing, with a small but pleasant outdoor section. There was also one complimentary drink in the lounge beside the spa, where you could enjoy the luxurious surroundings. With all that, we expected dinner to match the setting. It didn’t. Apart from the fresh fish plate, the dishes were ordinary, more like what you’d get at a cheap group-tour inn. At that price, the value was extremely poor, and it was hard to say more about the food. We were impressed and excited by the dinner at Sekiyou. If you care most about the atmosphere and spa, Tsubaki may suit you, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone choosing an inn mainly for its food. Sekiyou’s cooking is worth admiring, and Yugawara has plenty of other reasonably priced hotel spas with delicious dinners, including places in the 10,000-yen range that serve food on the level of an upscale Japanese restaurant.

The service was still excellent. Every staff member we met was courteous and professional. The public baths also seemed to be kept in relatively better shape. But after my first visit six years ago, when the ryokan was new, I’d returned expecting the gorgeous setting, food, service, and atmosphere that had amazed me then. Once Japan reopened to tourists, this was the first place I wanted to visit. Unfortunately, it seems the pandemic took a real toll. The rooms are worn down, with marks and scratches across the walls and floors. The bathroom wasn’t clean, we had to kill a huge cockroach during the night, and a strange smell came from the toilet. Construction across the street meant banging was clearly audible from 8am-6pm. Dinner was bad. I didn’t enjoy a single dish, which is unusual for Japan. Breakfast, on the other hand, was brilliant. At about 1k a night, it wasn’t cheap, and I probably won’t return unless the ryokan gets some kind of renovation.