Period of stay: 1st January to 2nd January
Cost : 88000¥ for 3 people
Location: Hida, gifu
Overall 9/10
I am on the most part a very budget traveler, but for this trip, I wanted to splurge on a ryokan however I didn’t want to just spend hundreds on some random ryokan in Kyoto, I wanted something different and very local, for the price we paid this is probably one of the best experiences/stay I’ve ever had.
The location of the ryokan is quite out of the way, taking us almost 6 hours by bus and another 30 mins by local train just to get to the town that the ryokan is located in. Which for some might be an issue but the distance that we travelled made us feel like cold weary travellers ready for a night’s rest which in our opinion added to the atmosphere.
That is because the building that we stayed in was almost 200 years old and you can really feel the age of the building not in a bad sense as it has been recently renovated but it really felt as if you took a step back in time. Not only the building felt old but the service was as well. The service felt extremely traditional, they way they behave, and greeted us made us feel like we were their highest priority and that they wanted us to be as comfortable as possible.
We were served matcha and new years mochi during the Check-in and afterwards was shown around the building. Which was extremely helpful as this was an extremely old building, it was very much a maze, it was lucky that our room was near the onsen. The lady that was assigned to us, spoke English well and was a joy to talk to, any concerns or issue we had, she responded to us quickly
If you know anything about the Gifu region on news years day, you would have already realize that we were extremely close to the earthquake that happened near the noto peninsula. It was quite terrifying to realize that we were in a serious earthquake in such an old building. After the initial shock wave, the lady staff came to us and told us what to do as we are not familiar with earthquakes.
The room itself was old and beautiful, 2 tatami rooms, a kotasu and various amenities like tea and snacks where available, they also provided us with yukatas and additional yukata layers as the region gets very cold at night. The room had a sink and toilet but as this is a trational ryokan, all bathing is done in the onsen, some people might not be comfortable with this.
The onsen itself was really good and the water was perfectly warm, the place was clean and well stocked with soap, shampoo and moisturizers. The onsen looked clean and didn’t seem to have any black mold. The outdoor onsen was also very nice and clean, there was 2 pools outside, one surrounded with rocks and the other a giant wooden bath.
If you want a private bath you are able to book the indoor bath
The kaiseiki dinner and breakfast was amazing, very good selection of food and displayed quite a few stuff in the region, as it was new years, the dishes were slightly different with some traditional new years dishes included. The lady assigned to us served the food and also entertained us. It was very lovely.
After dinner they made our beds for us, and dispite the temperature outside dropping to – 8C (17F) the room was warm. We had no trouble sleeping on the futon. However if you cannot sleep on futons they do have rooms with western style beds. It is extremely quiet and because of the aftershock from the earthquake, we could hear the wood creaking.
They woke us up for breakfast and it was just as good as the dinner. We left early to go to shirakawago. This is actually a very good place to stay if you do plan to go to shirakawago.
Overall, the experience was extremely good, especially for what we paid for. We received immaculate service, great food, beautiful room with a view. What was interesting is that the clientele here seem to be mostly retirees, this is definitely a hidden gem. However the only thing that drops the rating down by 1 is that there really isn’t anything to do in the building, and because there location is relatively remote, there’s nothing to do outside of the ryokan, we mostly just stayed in our room drinking sake and eating senbei