Room
Taiseikan is a traditional Japanese full-service ryokan. If you're ever in Japan, this must be experienced. The room was very spacious, with a separate lounge area, a bathroom that has natural spring water running through the taps, and the separate area with tatami mats where we will be eating and sleeping. The room was decorated in the traditional Japanese style, with paper screen separating the two sections. Tasteful pictures hung on the wall, and most importantly, there was a great view of the creek flowing outside our window.
Surprisingly, sleeping on futons on the floor, with very fluffy doonas, was very comfortable.
Rating - 4.5
Facilities
This place also had everything we wanted and much more. The bathroom came with toiletries like "body lotion", "hair lotion", "skin lotion" and "milk lotion". Did I mention that this place has its own indoor and outdoor hot springs and baths? It was divine, I went to the ladies section and had it almost all to myself most times. Of course, all the mod-cons like hair-dryers, towels, scales were present.
There are different slippers for everything, going to the bathroom, going on tatami mats and going outside. We kept forgetting to change our slippers which I think is very bad etiquette. The staff also kept turning and rearranging our slippers every time we took them off which made us feel guilty!
The staff are very, very very polite. They want to clean and serve us all the time. The morning we were leaving, they loaded all of our luggage and pushed it out of the room for us without us even asking. Our personal "maid" couldn't speak very much English so it was very funny watching her trying to explain the rituals to us.
Rating - 5
Location
A very handy location 2 minutes away from the Miyanoshita railway station or 1 minutes from Miyanoshita bus stop. The hotel is reached by a 10 minutes cable car ride. You go all the way down the mountain, and end up in a valley. So as you can see, the hotel is very secluded.
Rating - 5
Value
Very expensive at 42000 Yen per night, including breakfast and dinner. But for the level of service and the quality we experienced, it was definitely worth it.
Rating - 4.5
Food
Part of the experience is of course the food. Dinner and breakfast is only part of the ritual. We were served kaiseki style cuisine in our rooms by our maid, little dishes of exquisitely presented food appealed before us, until the whole table was filled. It was a culinary and visual experience. There was a lot of attention to details, a balance of different flavour, and the potions thought out carefully so you don't feel bloated at the end of the meal. (See my post on this). I think if we had a better understanding and appreciation of Japanese cuisine we would have enjoyed it even more as each dish is supposed to have a lot of meaning behind it.
Rating - 4.5
Snoozie Points - 23.5
Info
72 Miyanoshita,
Hakone, Kanagawa 250-0404,
Japan
Phone +81-460-2-2281
Website
