I need to start finding a place I can relax in, and my lack of Japanese and the lack of english ability of Japanese hotels/ryokans overall really get me down.
Foreign run places are okay as well!
Can anyone recommend me their favourite English friendly ryokans outside Tokyo?
Thanks!
5 comments
Their website isn’t in English but last I went, they had an English-speaking employee: https://zekuu.jp/
It’s a great place, great view of the ocean, private bath on the balcony, the room itself is fantastic, food is great. Not a whole lot to do around the Ryokan itself and can be a bit pricey though.
Might be worth sending an email to make sure if the staff I had is still there.
[deleted]
If you’re good with visiting Chubu instead of sticking around Tokyo, try Fujioto in Tsumago. It’s very peaceful and the woman who runs it is fluent in English. Her father, who still helps when he can, speaks both English and fluent Italian. https://www.tsumago-fujioto.jp/
I stayed at one called Yufusan. It’s technically in Yufuin but it’s away from the hot spring town area. We had a room with a semi-rotenburo (=you could open a door in the bathroom) with an amazing view of Mt. Yufudake.
It was super relaxing, and the place had more of a hostel feel than a ryokan style. They seemed used to/geared towards international travelers.
Filtering out your experiences based on English is wasting the vast majority of opportunities offered by living in Japan. The universe is calling you to study more. Even if your Japanese isn’t good (mine isn’t), desensitising yourself to imperfect conversation also holds value.
It will take about 1 hour in advance to write a script for every conceivable sentence you would want to say, and print it out. You can write down the romaji too, then read it out loud from your piece of paper. If you need to do something unexpected, you can use google translate or type the word you don’t know into a dictionary app.
With all this, you can then just find any hotel that looks good, and you will survive.