Accommodations

Vacationing in Japan, one of the must-do activity was to experience living in the past thus we wanted to stay in a Ryokan…this was a wonderful and memorable experience.

When entering the Ryokan, you are seated and served some local beverage and snacks. You are then escorted to your room where you see the straw mats, the low tables and know you are in for an experience.

The tv is very small and only has Japanese channels but you are here to experience living in the past. The bathroom is small and is laid out in three different rooms, toilet, shower and sink. The doors are lovely and the closets hides the bed linen. Everything is done while sitting or sleeping on the straw mats….different and fun experience.

During dinner, staff will help lay out the bed for your night sleep. The staff overall are amazing ; very friendly, fluent in English and incredibly helpful.

Highly recommend you opt to go with the meal plan. The Kyo-Kaiseki we had for breakfast and dinner were wonderful ; although the price with the meals may seem high, once you enjoy the experience, you realize that it was a great bargain. Similar meals in NY for dinner would easily cost in excess of 200 (known as omasake)

There is a public bath on the 6th floor and we were hesitant in using since its quite an experience bathing in Japan. But thankfully as men and women have their own baths whereby they need to be fully nude, we didn’t have anyone there during our time in the baths. There is instruction guiding you and its basically enter to the locker room and rinse yourself ; enter to the bath house, dip into the bath, then wash yourself in the shower area right outside the bath and then go back into it after showering. (we learned that in most apartments/houses, families would take turns showering and then going to the bath)

thus this is a wonderful experience getting to really immerse yourself in Japanese culture….