What is a traditional Japanese ryokan. Ryokan. Japanese traditional hotel. Your booking includes

For many centuries, Japan was closed off from the rest of the world. Foreigners were not allowed, and those who miraculously got to the islands rarely had the opportunity to leave them. Therefore, the life of the Land of the Rising Sun was shrouded in a veil of mystery until the beginning of the 20th century.

Mikaway, Hakone
The rich history has left its mark on modern life, on specific rules and traditions that exist only in this country. Came from the depths of centuries and national Japanese hotels. In Russian, their name sounds like ryokan. What was inaccessible to our ancestors in the Middle Ages, now may well give pleasure to the tourist, allowing you to plunge into the world of ancient Japanese customs, live the life of ancient aristocrats.

Hot Spring at Takefue Ryokan, Kumamoto Prefecture
In the Middle Ages, the feudal lords, following the city of Edo, as the current Tokyo was called in those distant times, stopped at inns called honjin. They were located along the roads and served as a haven only for passing nobles, since the overnight stay, maintenance and food spent here required a lot of money. Poorer people stayed in hatago, which provided only lodging for the night. True, in some, visitors could buy inexpensive food or cook it themselves, paying the owner for the firewood needed for this. The Japanese believe that it is from honjin and hatago that modern national ryokan hotels have drawn their features. The Japanese islands are of volcanic origin, and therefore are rich in thermal waters with healing properties. In areas rich in such sources, along with modern hotels, the best hotels decorated in the national style offer their services. Although ryokans in Japan can be found in other picturesque places, it is still better to visit them in such places.
To enjoy all the charms of onsen filled with warm healing mineral water, natural natural reservoirs, you need to visit Hakone. This small resort village, located near an extinct volcano, is known throughout the world for its thermal springs. Millions of people come here to get rid of many diseases, or just relax, relax against the backdrop of beautiful mountain scenery. The most famous of the local hotels is Mikaway, one of the oldest in Hakone. It should be noted that a traditional hotel in Japan is not only and not so much a place of residence, but above all a tribute to national traditions. Therefore, every Japanese considers it his duty to spend at least one night a year in it. For most foreign tourists, the ryokan hotel also helps to gain a deeper understanding of Japanese culture and customs of the mysterious island nation. The traditional place of tourist pilgrimage in Japan is the ancient capital city of Kyoto. It is not surprising that the best hotels, including those decorated in the national style, are located here. The city is famous for such ryokans as "Tavaraya", "Hiiragia" and others - known all over the world.

A room at Ryokan Tawaraya, Kyoto
Usually, these are small, colorfully decorated wooden buildings located in picturesque places. As a rule, a ryokan has a spacious hall-like room in which guests are welcomed. In it, they can then jointly while away the evenings, including watching TV. When the necessary formalities are settled, a Japanese woman in national dress takes the guests directly to the room, which is a relatively small room lined with mats. In a tiny hallway, you should take off your shoes before continuing your acquaintance with the place of future residence. If we do not take into account a low table, cushions or small chairs around it, niches in the walls painted and hung with national symbols, one of which can house a refrigerator, then furniture, in our concept, is absent. An optional attribute is even a TV, although some rooms have one. When the room is divided into several parts, thin partitions made of bamboo and paper play the role of walls. The doors are made from the same material.

In ryokans, guests sleep on the tatami directly on the floor.
To visit the toilet room there are special slippers, and wearing in the room and on the territory of the hotel, a traditional Japanese bathrobe. Japanese room attendants are polite and courteous, always ready to immediately fulfill the wishes of the guest.
Almost every ryokan hotel in Kyoto, as well as in Hakone, has an ofuro - a common bath, heated and filled with thermal springs. The bath can only be visited after a good shower, completely naked, since it serves for relaxation, and not for washing. And indeed, after spending an hour in the miraculous water, you feel fresh and cheerful, as if by hand it removes all ailments and fatigue.

Typical breakfast at a ryokan
In whatever city there are ryokans in Japan, they are famous not only for the courtesy of the staff, mostly female, but also for the excellent national cuisine. The price includes a light breakfast and dinner with a variety of small but varied and tasty dishes. An obligatory part of the menu is fish, including raw fish, edible roots and leaves of plants, many of which are harvested in the wild. In a high-class ryokan hotel, dinner is usually served directly to the room. In the rest, guests eat at the restaurant. Sometimes there is a choice. Polite, helpful staff will definitely teach you how to use specific appliances and tell you what to eat with what. If you want to spend the night in a traditional Japanese hotel, you can take a tour of the Hakone area, where you can stay at any ryokan you like. And here is a video about the famous throughout Japan "Shibu Onsen", a ryokan, which, according to rumors, became the prototype of the very ryokan where the events in the animated film "Spirited Away" (directed by Hayao Miyazaki) unfold:

The best ryokans are located at onsen hot springs, which are pleasingly abundant in Japan. And if you already stop at a ryokan, then definitely in a place with hot springs. Japanese hotels with onsen close to cities popular with foreign tourists are:
- near Tokyo: Hakone (region near Mount Fuji), Nikko/Kinugawa, and Izu;
- near Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto: in the Arima region.
Good ryokans are also found on Miyajima, a picturesque island near Hiroshima, famous for its cultural heritage, but, unfortunately, without known hot springs.
There are also Japanese-style inns in Tokyo, which may cost a night less than hot spring ryokans. True, among them there are rarely hotels that convey all the variety of pleasures that real ryokans hide in themselves, located in the bosom of beautiful, peaceful nature. In Kyoto, a city that carefully preserves centuries-old traditions, there are also many ryokans of various levels and prices. Therefore, in Tokyo and Kyoto, Western-style hotels are cheaper, more familiar and more convenient. One room can accommodate almost any number of people from 2 or up to ... This figure is limited only by the capacity of the rooms that the ryokan has.
Check-in usually starts at 15:00, check-out: from 10:00 or 11:00. If you wish to check in earlier or check out later, you may be asked to pay for an additional night. This is due to the fact that the room will not have time to prepare for you or other visitors, therefore, the previous night or the next room will be empty, and this is a significant loss for ryokans. (And then, between us, in some regions there are so many people who want to stay at a ryokan, regardless of the cost of rooms, that the institution begins to “pick and pick” and select the most convenient visitors. And foreigners may not be included in this category of people. Why? Everyone simple. The Japanese love order and standardity. And nothing, including increased pay, can affect this. With foreigners, misunderstanding can come and, as a result, dissatisfaction with guests, plus lack of knowledge of foreign languages, individual wishes that simply confuse the staff hotel: not because of the strangeness of wishes, but because of non-standard behavior.)
But, in any case, as soon as you cross the threshold of the ryokan, you will be enveloped in maternal care by the hotel staff, because now you are under their care, and visitors in Japan, as perhaps nowhere else in the world, can be treated like royalty. Do not rush to pick up the key and go to the room, as most likely a special employee has been assigned to you who will take you to the room, help you bring your things in, and introduce you to the interior of your new temporary housing. You will be seated to rest at a low table, offered tea and sweets. You will be sure to agree on the time of dinner and breakfast. As a rule, this is done even in not very expensive places, but if you stay for a long time, you can even stipulate the menu for the following days (for example, we want meat or fish in such and such a form). If you are a cultured and polite guest, the staff will always meet you halfway, even if your wishes are strange in the eyes of the Japanese, especially if you are traveling with children.
When entering the room, you must take off your shoes. This is done not in the corridor, but in the part specially designated for this at the entrance already inside the room, which is separated from the main part by a small step. You must cross this step already barefoot. This is due to the fact that the Japanese never walk on the tatami in shoes, even in slippers. And the floor in the ryokan rooms is lined with just one of them. It is worth noting that tatami are not rice mats, but full-fledged mats with which the floor is laid. Also, suitcases are not carried on the tatami. Therefore, if you have a suitcase on wheels and want to bring it into the main room of the room, you will have to carry it in your hands over the tatami.
On the shoe shelf at the entrance you will most likely find slippers. But it's not for room use. As already mentioned, the tatami walk exclusively barefoot. You can use these slippers when moving around the hotel, including for going to dinner in a restaurant, and in a bathhouse. Continuing the theme of slippers, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that most likely you will find another pair in the toilet. These slippers are exclusively for use inside the washroom. Probably to keep toilet odors and bacteria out of the toilet floor and into the main living area. If you decide to walk in these slippers along the corridor, you will look rather strange in the eyes of the surrounding Japanese - both hotel guests and staff.
But back to the room. In the main room, there will definitely be a low table and matching low chairs or special zabuton pillows. Most likely there will be a TV and a refrigerator. Partitions between parts of the rooms, if you have a spacious room, are Japanese shoji sliding walls: a wooden frame with paper instead of glass.
Japanese futon mattresses, which are traditionally spread directly on the tatami, act as a sleeping place. Until the evening they are stored in the closet. You don't have to worry about unfolding your futons, the hotel staff will do it for you while you enjoy your dinner. If you stay at the ryokan for several days, the staff will clean the futons during breakfast or in the afternoon when your room is cleaned. Beds familiar to Europeans can be found, as a rule, in "superior" rooms, but even there it is often not a double bed, but two singles, which is associated with the peculiarities of Japanese married life. Beds can be small and low even in expensive rooms. Do not be surprised. This is an attempt to adapt European furniture to a traditional Japanese interior.
If you decide to choose a room in a ryokan yourself, be sure to pay attention that the room has both a bathroom and a toilet, as often, especially in budget options for traditional Japanese hotels, it is expected that the visitor will wash and enjoy in a public onsen (bath ), so the bathroom in the room is not much needed.
Hot spring ryokans offer rooms with private outdoor rotenburo baths (in addition to the traditional bathroom or in-room shower). In some hotels, the water in such baths is ordinary tap water, more often it is diluted tap water (undiluted water from the source may be too hot). Sometimes it happens that the shower, in which it is customary to wash before diving into the rotenburo, is also in the open air, which can be an unpleasant surprise in the cold season. And this shower is the only place where you can wash in the room, despite the considerable price for the night.
In any room of the ryokan, regardless of its status, you will find a yukata - a light kimono that you can wear not only in your room, when going to a restaurant or bathhouse, but even outside the hotel (if it is located in a town famous for hot springs ). To avoid incidents, pay attention to how to properly put on a yukata. It is not difficult to do this - you just need to remember one rule: first the right floor of the dressing gown is wrapped, then the left (this applies to both men and women). On the contrary, in Japan only the dead are plowed. So, be careful! An obi belt is usually issued with the yukata, as well as a special insulated cape if you arrive during the cold season.
Each ryokan has public baths with separate rooms for men and women. Often, good ryokans offer small bath rooms that can be rented for a family or for one person, but usually not more than an hour.
Dinner is usually served at 18:00-19:00. The exact time of dinner will be given to you upon check-in at the hotel and you will be asked to choose the most convenient time for you. Even in a very expensive ryokan, rescheduling dinner time can be impossible.
Dinner can be brought directly to the room, or traditionally served in the hotel restaurant. The higher the class of the ryokan, the more likely it is that food will be brought directly to your room. The hotel staff will explain, if necessary, how and with what to eat this or that dish.
Dinner at a ryokan is usually a kaiseki-style dinner - a rich variety of dishes made with local ingredients and always in keeping with the season. Each dish is served on a separate plate (often also locally produced) of various shapes and sizes. You will be served fresh sashimi fish, marinated, boiled, fried and steamed dishes prepared from fresh ingredients: vegetables, fish, meat; at the end of dinner - rice and miso soup, and finally - dessert (usually a fruit that grows in the area where the ryokan is located, or sherbet). A kaiseki-style dinner is a unique opportunity to experience all the variety of Japanese traditional cuisine in one evening and understand that real Japanese cuisine is not only a feast for the stomach, but also for the eyes: the presentation is so beautiful and original.
As a rule, dinner is included in the room rate, but drinks, including non-alcoholic ones, are paid separately. Water and Japanese tea are provided free of charge. Dinner at the hotel can be omitted, but this is unlikely to affect the cost of your stay.
Let's make a reservation right away that by the word "bath" in relation to Japanese onsen, we mean not a Russian or Turkish bath with a sauna and a steam room, but a special traditional place in Japan where they wash and relax, taking water procedures (you can read more about Japanese baths - onsen in our other articles). Each ryokan has public baths, separate for men and separate for women. Some traditional Japanese-style inns offer their visitors a rich selection of indoor and outdoor baths, which may even be located in different parts of the ryokan. Sometimes you can find baths for joint (female and male) use. There are also saunas aimed at families or couples who want to take water procedures together, without the participation of strangers. Check with the ryokan website or with your tour operator if there is a similar alternative at the hotel of your choice if you prefer a purely personal way of enjoying water treatments. And do not forget to ask the hotel staff if you need a preliminary reservation. If necessary, just in case, do it as early as possible, as then there may not be a free window for you.
As a rule, ryokan visitors take a bath before dinner / breakfast or after dinner. Most baths in hotels are open during the day, in the evening and in the morning, some can work around the clock.
How to recognize an onsen in a ryokan? It can be calculated by the multi-colored curtains separating the dressing room from the hotel corridor. Blue curtains usually hang in front of the entrance to the men's section, red - to the women's. Be careful: sometimes the curtains are changed so that visitors can take different types of baths.
In the sauna room there is a place for undressing, a low shower, taps and actually
a bath, more like a shallow pool (approximately knee-deep), filled with hot water.
In Japanese onsen, everyone is obligated to bathe without any clothes: swimsuits, swimming trunks and underwear on you in a shared bath are by no means welcome, despite the fact that on advertising posters you can often see a visitor relaxing in a bathing suit or wrapped in a towel.
First, you should thoroughly wash yourself in the shower (shampoo, conditioner and shower gel, as a rule, ryokans kindly offer their guests in onsens). And only after you have washed you can go into the hot water in the shared bathroom. All hotel guests use the same water, and polluting it with an unwashed body, shampoo or soap is considered extremely uncultured behavior. Onsen is a place for rest and relaxation not only for you, but also for those around you, so try not to make noise or speak in raised tones.
When you check-in, you will most likely be asked which style of breakfast you prefer: European or Japanese. As a rule, breakfast is served separately for each person, and not in the form of a buffet, therefore, if you are traveling with a company, you must clearly tell the ryokan staff in advance (at least in the evening) how many people will have breakfast in Japanese, and how many in European style.
A Japanese breakfast usually includes: rice, miso soup, salad, fried fish, tofu, fermented soybeans natto, an egg of some kind, pickled vegetables, salad and, of course, tea. European breakfast consists of yogurt, toast, ham, scrambled eggs, jam or jam, coffee or juice.
Some ryokans offer massage services. Somewhere massage therapists work in separate rooms on a fixed schedule, somewhere they come to the room at the appointed time. Many tourists who are not familiar with Japanese realities believe that by paying a certain amount, you can call such a massage therapist at any time convenient for them. This is not true: massage therapists have a tight work schedule, perhaps even in more than one ryokan per evening.
Typically, the cost of a night in a ryokan in a regular Japanese-style room per person is between $100 and $200. A night in a room with rotenburo will cost more: from $200 and an average of about $300 per person. The cost of a night in the best ryokan can reach $1000 - $1200 per person. The price usually includes breakfast and dinner. You can refuse them, but in this case the money will not be returned to you. A ryokan means that at least two people are allowed to share a room. One person can check in with the condition of paying for the room as for two people.

Ryokan. Japanese traditional hotel.

To experience the atmosphere of feudal Japan, you need to spend the night in a "ryokan", a traditional Japanese inn. There is a wide variety of such hotels from small, wooden ones to huge modern ones, many of which have banquet halls and restaurants. A room in a ryokan is usually one large room, the floor of which is covered with traditional "tatami" made from rice straw. In the center is a low table. Sliding "shoji" instead of doors. The room must have a tokonoma - a wooden niche on which an ikebana is located and above which a picture or an inscription hangs - kakemono. You can admire the beautiful view from the windows of your room: the Japanese garden or the endless sea. All staff are dressed in kimonos. Guests sleep on "futons", which are laid out in the evenings by maids.

Japan has a surprisingly long history of hotels that, in keeping with the concept of a hotel, provide Western-style bed rooms and European restaurants. Hotel "Kanaya" in and the hotel "Fujiya" in, which began to work in 1875 and 1878. respectively, even older than the famous "Ritz" in Paris! The external and internal style is often borrowed from Buddhist and Shinto shrines. Typical examples are the "Kanai" and "Fujiya" hotels mentioned above, which are examples borrowed from Tosegu's shrine. The hotel owners have done everything to ensure that their guests enjoy the Japanese atmosphere combined with the comfort of a modern hotel. Today, these buildings, with a view more exotic than any active church or temple, seem to represent not real Japan, but a fantasy land in the illusions of foreigners.

Most ryokans have their own onsens. Staying in a hotel built on hot springs is quite expensive. But that doesn't deter visitors. Rooms in such hotels for the weekend must be booked a couple of weeks in advance. Traveling to onsen with families, companies or alone is almost an obligatory ritual for many Japanese. And pulls them here, first of all, the opportunity to communicate with nature, to feel not only visually, but also, as they say, with the whole skin. At hotels, entire cascades of "rotenburo" are often built - open-air baths, where the eyes of bathers are not limited by walls and fences, but, on the contrary, they have magnificent views of mountains, valleys, copses.

Lords traveling in and out of Edo stayed at inns called honjin. Some of the big cities along the main roads had as many as five or six honjin. During the busy season, it often happened that several daimyo (feudal lords) flocked to the city, causing considerable disturbance, until the plan for the surrender of the premises was settled.

While the moving feudal lords stayed in honjin, the common people spent their nights in inns called hatago. The simplest hatago were called ki-tin-yado, or "firewood-paying hotels". Here, travelers cooked their own food from the food they brought with them, paying the owner only for the wood they used as fuel.

Hongjin And hatago The Edo period is considered the forerunner of modern ryokan. Even some of the highest class Japanese hotels today have inherited the tradition honjin where they stayed many years ago daimyo. Other ryokans even more luxurious than hatago, which at one time were under the auspices of wealthy merchants. Famous hotels in type TAVARAYA, SUMIA and HIIRAGIA, are considered high-class ryokans, descended from the hatago. Prestigious high class hotels in Kyoto catered to a regular clientele, mostly wealthy merchants from nearby and Omi.

Your room rate includes two meals - an invariable evening feast that includes the delights of the local cuisine, and a simple breakfast. Traditional Japanese food is made from fish and seafood. By the way, as the Japanese themselves say, they live more than other nations precisely because of the huge variety and quantity of fish products. Lunch at a good ryokan will satisfy any demanding gourmet and give you an idea of the many faces and variety of Japanese cuisine. The Japanese eat with chopsticks - hussies, which are considered sacred symbols, they are made from cherries, maples, pines - these bring good luck, from ebony - longevity, eating with chestnut sticks, if used for a long time, leads to wealth.

There are obvious differences between a Japanese hotel and a Western style hotel. First of all, the Japanese inn, or ryokan, is built in the traditional style, while hotels in Japan are everywhere built on a reinforced concrete frame. In the ryokan you sit on mats tatami and sleep on the floor futon and instead of a bathrobe they give you yukata. There are also other, more subtle differences. The most important of these is service, or, more precisely, the attitude of staff and guests to service. In the hotel, employees provide services only at the request of the client. At the ryokan, the staff is always around, offering one service after another before you even think about ordering.

As soon as you check into a Japanese hotel, you are shown your room. The maid in charge of your room will soon appear. She brings some local snacks and green tea on the table, invites you to help yourself and stays in the room for a while to chat and answer questions. This is the perfect time for guests to casually tip her. These tips are called kokoro-zuke.

Kokoro-zuke slightly different from tipping in the West, and this is another difference between the hotel and ryokan. In a hotel, you tip as a thank you for a specific service, like when a bellboy brings your luggage or after a meal. We give kokoro-zuke just once, shortly after arrival, as a way of saying " erosiku onegai simas(I hope we can count on you during our stay here.) At the hotel, we ask for what we want when we think we really want it. ryokane we go into the care of the staff and leave them things.

In a ryokan, you can relax more because you don't have to deal with small things. In a good ryokan, the staff is intuitive - they read your mind and bring you whatever you want before you ask for it. You are in their care. This is the special side of the ryokan. As soon as you feel hungry, your food immediately appears - you do not have to ask for it, and there is no need to fuss over the menu. After the end of the meal, the plates disappear. This happens for both dinner and breakfast, as ryokan serves both. One of the perks of having a ryokan is that you eat in your room. Some hotels have been known to offer room service, and a newer ryokan may have a communal dining area. But usually the ryokan staff will bring you food to your room.

And what dishes! Traditional Japanese food is a delight to see and taste. For many people, food is the deciding factor in judging a ryokan. A good ryokan will serve local delicacies of the season. If you are near the sea, you will have fresh sashimi(raw fish) served on a wooden plate that looks like a small boat. Go to the mountains and you will have a lot of wild vegetables on your table, freshly picked, of course. Eating at a good ryokan will satisfy the most demanding gourmet and give you an idea of the great variety of food available in Japan.

In a ryokan, you don't have to worry about what to wear. In your room you will find a kind of bathrobe that looks like an informal kimono. This is a yukata. Change into a yukata and a tanjin jacket and you're dressed for dinner in your room or a formal evening in the lobby. You can even go to bed in a yukata. In a hotel you have to dress up for any occasion, but in a ryokan, no matter how luxurious it may be, a simple yukata will suffice. This is another important difference between a hotel and a ryokan.

In a hotel, your room is the only private area at your disposal. Open the door to the corridor - and you are in the common area. In Japan, people might wear yukata in their hotel rooms, but they would never walk around the hotel in them - they would feel like they were walking around in pajamas. But in the ryokan, you can enter the lobby or even the garden wearing only a yukata. It's like the whole ryokan is an extension of your own number. You only appear in public after you leave the ryokan premises.

At a ryokan, you can think of large baths as an extension of your own room. Sitting naked in a chin-length hot tub is one of the beauties of being in a ryokan. A lot of ryokan, apart from places like , are located near the hot springs, and people who come here are happy to slip into the bath and do what is best done in a Japanese hotel - relax.

In fact, all ryokan staff are women. This applies to both maids who monitor their work. Service in ryokans is performed mainly by women wearing kimonos. In a sense, these women act as mothers to travelers away from home. As you can see, the ryokan is for people who want to forget all their worries and just relax.

Given the elegance and sophistication inherent in living in Japan, staying in a ryokan requires some rules that are different from Western hotels. First of all, guests take off their shoes on the threshold of the hotel and walk around the hotel halls in slippers. These slippers, in turn, are removed outside the guest room: only bare feet or feet in stockings are allowed to step on the tatami.

Ryokans are ubiquitous in Japan, but for maximum enjoyment, you should find a ryokan in a quiet residential area. Most ryokans are small buildings with no more than a dozen or so rooms, and often have a small garden under the windows of the ryokans. There are about 70,000 ryokans in Japan, 1,800 of which are high quality establishments affiliated with the Japan Ryokan Association.

Anyone who is keen to learn more about Japanese traditions and culture would find the history of the national inns especially appealing!

According to Nipponia magazine.

A great way to experience Japanese hospitality and lifestyle is to spend a couple of nights in ryokan. Ryokan is a traditional inn that differs in many ways from the standard western-style hotels found in Tokyo and other major cities. In a ryokan, any client is a dear guest, so even in the most modest hotel you will be surrounded by care and goodwill. Here everything is done in order to get rid of any worries for a while. It’s worth starting by taking off your city clothes and putting on a dedicated yukata robe and slippers. Green tea in a ryokan is drunk at a low table, sitting right on the floor, and after a long journey, you can take a bath in a hot spring and feel how tired you are and your thoughts are clear. I invite you to a tour of the ryokan - do not forget to take off your shoes!

The hotel we booked through Booking.com was called Maruyaso and was located ten minutes from Lake Kawaguchi, about 15 km from the sacred Mount Fuji. Due to the lack of a sign in English, we were looking for an institution for about twenty minutes. I even had to invade the property of a local Japanese family to ask for directions. A kind Japanese recognized the name of the hotel by ear and walked with us to a small two-story house, which flaunted the same hieroglyphs as on the printout with the reservation.

The house does not shine with architectural excesses, but it looks neat.

In front of the entrance is a small Japanese garden.

We knock, move the slider door, and a couple of minutes later the hostess comes out into the hallway - an elderly Japanese woman in a kimono. The hostess does not speak a word of English, but smiles sweetly, not surprised at our foreign appearance, and immediately arranges a tour of the hotel. Shoes must be left at the entrance, be sure to change into slippers for guests.

This ryokan has a total of 11 rooms spread over two floors. There are shared toilets and wash basins in the hallway. In the toilets, by the way, there are also special slippers.

I thought that we would be taken to our room right away, but the hostess repeats the word “onsen” several times, and I understand that she wants to show the bath first. I must say that in Japan, many ryokans were built near hot springs, and there are simply an incredible number of them in the Fuji area. Onsen are common for men and women, and are separate.

Before bathing, you should take a shower to wash off the dirt and dive into a hot bath already clean. For convenience, you can sit on plastic pots and basins. Most shower heads are hung so low that it becomes very difficult to wash while standing.

Hot water flows from the well into the granite bath around the clock. “All time,” said the elderly hostess, implying that you can swim in the onsen around the clock, even late at night. You have no idea what a thrill it is to return in the evening after a walk around the lake (it was quite cool in the evenings away from Tokyo), turn on the massage jet in the bathroom and surrender to water procedures. There were very few guests in the ryokan, so I never met anyone in the onsen and enjoyed being alone.

And only after demonstrating the principle of the baths, the hostess took us to the second floor, to the room.

In a traditional ryokan room, the floors are covered with tatami straw mats, the doors and shutters are often made of bamboo gratings covered with thin paper (shoji). In our case, the doors were more impressive, but the shutters were indeed covered with paper, although ordinary windows were hidden behind them.

The furnishings in the rooms are quite spartan in the eyes of a European - a low table, seat cushions, a wardrobe with mattresses and bed linen, a bedside table. Of the modern details - a TV (we never turned it on), air conditioning (very necessary on hot days and cold nights) and an electric kettle.

At some point, we looked out the window and almost dropped our jaws - we got a room with an excellent view of Fuji. Moreover, the day turned out to be absolutely cloudless. I think that our enthusiastic reaction pleased the hostess.

After this wonderful news, we continued to inspect the room. Here's the remote control for the air conditioner and paper grills.

Built-in wardrobe doors.

Photographs of Fuji from different seasons - spring, summer (notice the lack of snow at the top?), autumn and winter.

Some message on the wall was still not understood. Anyone try to translate? Interesting to know what is being said here.

I was especially pleased with the calendar on the wall - the month of May was illustrated with a photograph with the Eiffel Tower. I did not hesitate to explain on my fingers to the hostess that I had just flown in from there.

The Japanese woman poured water into the kettle and set the water to boil for tea. She brought rice cookies, green tea, bowed and quietly left.

Tired after the long drive from Tokyo, we changed into yukata robes and had a tea party overlooking Mount Fuji.

Of course, it was not possible to refuse a photo session, and several dozen memorable cards remained as a keepsake.

In ryokan, it is customary to sleep directly on the floor, on futon mattresses. The situation turns out to be a little campy, and it is probably not convenient to live in such a room for a long time, but it is very cozy. You get some inexplicable buzz, temporarily abandoning chairs and beds.

We spent three days at the ryokan - walking around, drinking tea, taking hot baths and sleeping wonderfully on the floor. And every day I was pleased with an incredible view, one of the best in my memory.

As I said, there were very few guests in the ryokan, so you could freely walk along the corridor and look into the rooms. I took advantage of this and looked at how other rooms were equipped.

The size of the tatami is strictly regulated - 90 by 180 centimeters, due to which the area of rooms is traditionally measured in tatami.

Here is a room in 6 tatami.

But in 10 tatami, with a refrigerator.

The largest room in 12 tatami is designed for the whole family.

In ryokans, it is required to follow the rules of residence - leave shoes at the entrance, walk only barefoot on the tatami, keep silence and not disturb other guests. The front door is usually locked at night. In addition, high-class ryokans require strict adherence to etiquette.

There was a Toyota van parked in front of the hotel. Apparently, it is very rarely driven. Even in photographs

Inside, on the ground floor, there is a hall where tourists can relax and talk, as well as watch TV, if available:

In many ryokans, the door is locked at 11 pm.

You can not enter the lobby of the hotel until its owner appears.

The rooms also have a traditional look, with tatami floors and balcony doors made from shoji (thin paper). The door leading to the room can also be made of shoji, but more recently interior doors made of more durable materials have been used for security purposes.

In each room there is a small table with tea accessories, at which guests can dine, as many prefer to eat in their rooms.

There are no bathrooms in the rooms, with the exception of hotels built in recent years for foreigners. There is a shared bath. Two meals a day consists of breakfast and dinner, often served in the room.

From furniture - a small mirror on a stand, clothes hangers, a low table and, as a rule, a TV.

As soon as tourists arrive at the hotel, they are immediately shown to the room, and the maid brings some local food and green tea. The Japanese, as well as in other countries, have a custom to give tips to servants, but with a slight difference: here they are given only once, and must be wrapped in an envelope.

The staff of the ryokan are predominantly women, dressed in kimonos. The attitude of ryokan employees towards visitors is somewhat different than in modern hotels, since all services are provided only by order of the client, and in general the level of service is considered to be very high.

In the ryokan, you can wear a special kimono called yukata, which is in the room of each guest. You can wear a kimono both in the hotel and outside it:

So, for example, we went to the store. The surrounding people didn't react at all.

As for the food in the ryokan, the cuisine here is also traditional, it is called "kaiseki". Meals are usually two meals a day and are included in the room rate. The dishes served in the ryokan are small in size, but nevertheless their quantity is quite large. Most of the dishes are made from a variety of seafood - fish, squid, shrimp, etc.

After dinner, returning to the room, you can catch the following picture: mattresses and bed linen are already on the tatami. It's hard to sleep, but you get used to it with time:

Many ryokans that are not located in tourist centers will cost tourists quite inexpensively. For a night spent in such a hotel, you can pay about $40. But most ryokans, especially in Kyoto, are located in beautiful scenic areas, and for one night in these hotels you will have to pay much more, about $400. This ryokan costs $200 per night.

And so, you get up in the morning, open the window ... And there is complete serenity and silence:

Expensive ryokans are often surrounded by famous Japanese gardens, many are located on the coast, and some are located in mountainous areas. The beautiful nature around the hotel plays an important role in choosing a ryokan, and greatly affects the price.