Contents
| The Japanese Ryokan: A Timeless Retreat 8 | |
| Ryokan and Onsen Etiquette: Essential Knowledge 14 | |
| Around Tokyo | GORA KADAN Hakone, Kanagawa 20 |
| SENKYORO Hakone, Kanagawa 24 | |
| TSUBAKI Yugawara, Kanagawa 28 | |
| ATAMI SEKITEI Atami, Izu Peninsula 32 | |
| KONA BESSO Izu-Nagaoka, Izu Peninsula 36 | |
| YAGYU-NO-SHO Shuzenji, Izu Peninsula 40 | |
| SEIRYUSO Shimoda, Izu Peninsula 44 | |
| SENJYUAN Minakami, Gunma 48 | |
| NARAYA Kusatsu, Gunma 54 | |
| BANKYU RYOKAN Yunishigawa, Tochigi 58 | |
| SANRAKU Nasu, Tochigi 62 | |
| HOSHINOYA KARUIZAWA Karuizawa, Nagano 66 | |
| TOKIWA HOTEL Kofu, Yamanashi 70 | |
| Kyoto, Nara and Kansai | HIIRAGIYA Kyoto 74 |
| SEIKORO INN Kyoto 78 | |
| SUISEN Kameoka, Kyoto 82 | |
| KIKUSUIRO Nara 88 | |
| TOSEN GOSHOBO Arima, Hyogo 92 | |
| NISHIMURAYA HONKAN Kinosaki, Hyogo 96 | |
| Central Japan | RYUGON Minami-Uonuma, Niigata 102 |
| YUMOTO CHOZA Kamitakara-mura 108 | |
| WANOSATO Miya-mura, Gifu 116 | |
| KAYOTEI INN Yamanaka, Ishikawa 122 | |
| ARAYA TOTOAN Yamashiro, Kaga 128 | |
| HOUSHI Awazu Onsen, Komatsu 132 | |
| HAZU GASSYO Yuya Onsen, Aichi 140 | |
| Northern Japan | MUKAITAKI Higashiyama, Aizu-Wakamatsu 144 |
| SARYO SOEN Akiu, Sendai 148 | |
| TSURU-NO-YU Tazawako, Akita 154 | |
| KURAMURE Otaru, Hokkaido 162 | |
| Southern Japan | SEKITEI Ohno-cho, Hiroshima 168 |
| YAMATOYA BESSO Dogo, Matsuyama 172 | |
| MURATA Yufuin, Oita 176 | |
| MIYAZAKI RYOKAN Unzen, Nagasaki 184 | |
| YUSAI Kurokawa Onsen, Kumamoto 190 | |
| GAJOEN Makizono, Kagoshima 198 |
Sekitei, across from Miyajima, is a garden of peace overlooking Japan’s Inland Sea.
THE JAPANESE RYOKAN: A TIMELESS RETREAT
Edo elements remain alive at Tsuru-no-Yu in Akita, an inn popular with hikers, history buffs and bathers.
Slip off your shoes and enter a world that is distinctly Japanese. Cherry blossoms. Zen. Foamy green tea. Warm water meditations one might call, simply, a bath. Hospitality of honor. Ritualized routines to quiet, to sooth the mind, the spirit.
The philosophers, the potters, the tea masters and the poets of Japan, who, thousands of years ago halted the elaborate evolutions of beauty in all its sumptuous gold-leaf manifestations, have attracted generations of humbled aesthetics. Van Gogh, Picasso and Frank Lloyd Wright are among the many painters, architects and creative iconoclasts who have looked to Japan for inspiration. Free spirits have marveled at Japan’s studied serenity and heightened awareness of the beauty of a single blade of grass, a single flower petal, a single wave, a single volcanic mountain. They have studied wood, earth and stones, lines, planes and space and man’s daily interaction with the impermanence of nature.
A Japanese Zen monk once described absolute beauty as “pure white snow in a silver dish.” This crystalline perception of beauty, the distilled, asymmetrical, modest interpretations of Japanese art and architecture that now are emulated around the world are no longer easy to find in Japan. A 21st century traveler to Tokyo must visually edit telephone wires, construction cranes, a wealth of concrete box buildings, concrete mountain faces, neon, plastic and florid representations of nature in ersatz form.
The good news is that even the Japanese have begun to look for spaces that are authentic, organic, human, historic, refined and natural. There are classic inns throughout Japan that have maintained and refreshed their thatched roofs, their bold wood beams, their fragrant tatami floors. And there are innkeepers, who, thankfully, have saved farmhouses, samurai and lordly residences, sometimes moving them and adapting them to accommodate modern-day guests. There are also recently built inns that are prize-winning in design, progressive in their reverence for the use of natural materials, old-world traditional in their concern for showing foreign visitors the unique rituals of a night spent at a Japanese inn.
It long has been lamented that Japan is still backward in opening doors and receiving foreign guests in a way that does not offend host and guest alike. That too is changing. The rigid formality, the inability to communicate in any language other than Japanese and the abstruse dance of shoes and slippers and bowing and bathing costumes are no longer the norm in Japan. At last, self-conscious Japan recognizes that the international community treasures all that is special about Japanese hospitality and culture, yet requires more interpretation to access Japan’s less traveled paths. The Japanese government has launched a multi-million-dollar campaign, Yokoso! Japan, to welcome overseas visitors and encourage