Kinokuniya Ryokan

The dinner included in our rate was amazing. Very traditional and probably not for everyone but we really enjoyed the experience of trying all sorts of new foods! We expected the meal in our room as this is a traditional custom, but were pleased with the experience of dining in a large shared dining room elsewhere in the ryokan. We also had breakfast included which was a buffet, the range was broad and we enjoyed all the foods available for this. The staff were very welcoming, and attempted to accommodated our requests to the best of their abilities, we found them respectful and friendly. The room is appropriately traditional, although there were a few small things that needed repairing (a tear in one of the doors, a cabinet that looked like it had been punched) it didn't take away from the traditional experience of the room. The beds were pretty comfy and the room was bigger than we expected (we anticipated one room set up for dining which would be later changed to beds, but these were in separate areas with a sitting room overlooking the garden as well).

As westerners with no experience of onsens, we were unpleasantly surprised by the overwhelming smell of sulfur. Would have been better if there was a note about this upon booking, we were expecting a romantic experience and this isn't what we got at all. For some reason it was assumed we did not want our allocated private bathing time, and we had to ask about this when it wasn't offered upon check in (despite having emailed about this when we booked). Because of this delay we missed out on choosing which bathhouse we preferred and got stuck with the less appealing one in a very late time slot. The bathhouse we were in was ridiculously unclean. I realise the onsen is not cleaned out, but the surrounding deck/change area was filthy and added to the bad experience with the sulfur smell. If you know what to expect this would probably have been okay, but we were disappointed with the onsen/bath experience overall given the expensive price we paid. The garden that our room overlooked was nice in places but in need of some work, there were ugly boards over parts of the ground and exposed pipes running through many spots. Still a nice view but the mess did take away from it a little. Lastly, there was no hot/warm water in our room which surprised us, just a toilet and a basin with a cold tap, which we found rather unpleasant.