Night at the ryokan

Traveling in Japan is shockingly expensive: about $500/night when you include shinkansen (bullet train) tickets, a decent but not stellar hotel, meals and extras.

Fortunately, I won a top raffle prize at Nishimachi's recent Food Fair for a family one-night stay at Nasu Onsen Sanraku, a luxury ryokan (traditional Japanese inn). We knew this would be a full-on Japanese experience: a room with tatami mats, an elaborate kaiseki (multi-course meal) served en suite by a maid in a kimono, a bath in an onsen (natural hot-springs bath), and sleeping on futons on the floor. The real cost for the four of us -- in Japan, you pay for each guest, not for the room itself - would have been $1,000 for that one night. So we were feeling pretty lucky!

From the start, the service at Sanraku was exemplary. When we explained that we'd left our suitcases at the Nasu-shiobara train station to go hiking, the staff offered to pick the bags up for us, a round trip of about an hour. Here's the ryokan's entrance:


Here's our pristine room. You eat and sleep in the main room, with an alcove by the window for reading.


Our window framed the autumn leaves, an essential part of the decor.


On the table when we arrived: a warm towel, a warm sesame-paste sweet, and frothy, freshly whisked matcha (green tea).


When you walk into the hotel lobby, you take off your own shoes and put on slippers. Then in your room, you leave your slippers in the entryway (called a genkan) and tread on the tatami in bare feet or in white tabi socks. You also change into a yukata, a cotton kimono.


We went to the hotel's onsen, which was amazing. You shower and shampoo before you get into steaming water for a soak. Sanraku has an indoor pool and an outdoor pond with rocks to sit on. Men and women are separated because everyone is naked. It's delightful and incredibly relaxing. After the bath, Lu and Arno hung out in the electronic massage chairs.


After the bath, we returned to our room for supper. It was delicious and somewhat overwhelming. The maid brought in about a dozen plates, some of which had 4 or 5 different foods.

The intro (top) photograph in this post shows the first offerings served with a pear-wine aperitif. The menu also included:







Did I mention that the food was overwhelming? Arno didn't know what to make of the "kid's" meal, which included some delicious grilled steak and wasabi-free sushi. He drank orange soda and ate rice and omochi (pounded rice balls) filled with azuki bean paste. But Lucinda was amazing and tried almost everything.

Here's Blaine, drinking a beer and lounging in his yukata at the very, very low table - which is not so comfortable for tall people like us.


After supper, the kids watched Japanese TV in the ground-level chairs...


... and then we walked around the hotel, checked out the gift shop, and returned to our room to collapse on the futons by 10pm. Sadly, I took no photos of the futons, but a worker moved the table to a corner and put four futons in a row against a wall of the main room. A very comfortable family sleepover.

The next morning, the maid returned with a massive and complex kaiseki breakfast of a dozen dishes, including fish shabu shabu, grilled fish, seaweed and pickles. This view shows my breakfast.


At this moment, all I wanted was a fresh croissant, a pot of jam, and a big cup of cafe au lait - or maybe some bran cereal, walnuts and sliced banana. I realized, as the maid walked in with maybe the 10th dish, that a little ryokan goes a long way. An amazing cultural experience, but one night was enough.

As the hotel van pulled away, en route for the train station, the staff bowed to say goodbye and thank you.