Yunohana Onsen

The Yunohana Onsen was our “splurge” for the Japan trip.  It is known for its open air  baths  and recommended by one of my Japanese friends as a good hotel to stay in.  Unfortunately, I do not have a lot of pictures of the exterior of the hotel as I’d forgotten to take them on our arrival or our departure.  I also do not have any pictures of the baths since I thought they may frown upon my taking pictures of their naked guests.

Anyway, on with the review. 

We were picked up by a very friendly shuttle driver from the bus stop, where we were dropped off by our tour guide.  It wasn’t a private transportation, as we had also picked up several young ladies from another stop who also seem to be checking into the hotel.  At the reception desk at the hotel, a nice young woman explained to us our room and dinner/breakfast arrangements.  I’m glad James was there as I got a bit confused with her explanation :(    Maybe I was just tired.

So, here are some pictures of our room.  

It has a similar setting as Sawanoya in that you have a small hallway that leads up to both the bathroom and the toilet.  Unlike Sawanoya, the sitting room for Yunohana is past the bedroom instead of before.  It is separated by a rice paper door, instead of a regular wooden door the way it was with Sawanoya.  The sitting room and the bedroom are also a lot bigger!  I honestly didn’t know what to do with all that space.

You might wonder why I even bothered to mention the type of separate each hotel used to separate out the bedroom and the sitting room.  Well, honestly, while I thought the rice paper door of the Yunohana looked more elegant, it didn’t server as much of a separation if one person wanted to sleep while the other person wanted to blog in the sitting room.  The light that poured through the rice paper door may be distracting for some people who are trying to sleep.  Luckily, James was too tired to be bothered at that time.

We decided to have dinner within an hour of our arrival.  Dinner is scheduled at one of Yunohana’s dining rooms and you were assigned a dining room based on your reservation, I believe.  James and I were given the Sagami room.  Pictures to come for the breakfast part of the review as we both forgot our cameras for the dinner part.  It was unfortunate that we forgot our camera for dinner, because this was the fanciest dinner we’ve had during our stay in Japan.  I said fanciest…not tastiest.  Perhaps it was a little too healthy for my palate.  It was a traditional Japanese Kaiseki dinner which had pickled vegetables, two types of fish, tofu, rice, miso—these were just the things I can recall without a picture.  The dinner experience was…formal.  Many of the guests (but not all) were already wearing their yukata and haori.  The atmosphere to me felt…not so at ease.  I don’t know if I can put my finger on it.  Our servers were very friendly…I think it was the other guests. They felt very stiff to me.

When we got back to our room, James decided to try out the onsen while I decided to wait it out.  I was hoping for a less crowded bath experience as I can be a bit shy about nudity.  Boy, how wrong I was.  When James came back from his bath wearing his yukata and haori, he said that he had the whole bath to himself.  People were just leaving as he came in so he was able to enjoy a nice private bath.  He did say however, that people looked at him funny as he walked down the halls wearing the yukata and haori.  Perhaps the Japanese people were just not used to seeing American white guys wear yukata?  Or was it something else?  This is the only place we stayed at in Japan where I didn’t see any other foreigners.  And honestly, except for the staff, this was the only place where people seemed very unfriendly or snotty.

Anyway, off to my onsen experience.  For those not familiar on how to take a bath in an onsen, here is crash course.  You are first led into a room that have lockers or baskets where you can place your slipper and belongings.  And when I say belongings, yes, I do mean all the clothes you are wearing.  From there, you can either grab a small towel to wrap around your waist, or you can proceed to the “shower room”.  The shower room is divided into stalls and you are provided a small bench where you can sit and clean yourself.  Shampoo , soap, and conditioner are provided.  After thoroughly cleaning yourself, there are two options for the “bath” at the Yunohana onsen.  Next to the shower stalls is a huge tub where many people can soak themselves at the same time in the hot spring water.  I went in there first.  After a few minutes, however, I decided to give the open air hot springs a try. 

And it was fabulous.  The water was slightly white from the sulfur and you can definitely smell it once you go outside.  But I didn’t think the smell was strong enough to detract from the onsen experience.  I felt so relaxed and I don’t know how long I was even there.  But when I started getting lightheaded (most likely from the heat of the water), I decided it was probably time to get out.

From what I understand, you don’t rinse off after the soak, in order to let the healing properties of the water.  And so I didn’t.  I just dried off and donned my yukata and haori before I slowly walked back to our room.  I was still a little lightheaded.  Unfortunately, at the time I went for a bath, a LOT of other women were there too so no private baths for me.  The saddest part was the fact that there was a line to use the foot massager and since I didn’t want to wait, I had to forego the experience.

Once I got back into the room, I decided to do some research as to what James and I were gonna do in Hakone the next day.  It is with great sadness that I have to report that the Yunohana Onsen had NO WIFI!  I’m a little surprised that such a fancy hotel wouldn’t have one when a small ryokan like Sawanoya had it for free!  So, most of the research I did were from the guidebooks given to us by our tour guide.  Luckily, one of the maps had a suggested route that took us all around Hakone using the different transportations!

The next morning, I donned my yukata and haori for breakfast and James and I went back to the Sagami room for our Japanese style breakfast.  This time, we both remembered our camera J

Again, for the price of the hotel, I felt that the breakfast was nothing special.  I’ve had just a good a breakfast at the Sawanoya.  Furthermore…they had this cold egg dish that was…disturbing.

View from Sagami room

After breakfast, James and I arranged for our two backpacks (and a souvenir bag) to be transported to the Hakone Yumoto station so that we are not lugging it around when we tour Hakone.  After our check out, we were driven by the hotel shuttle to the Ashinoya bus stop where we caught the bus heading for Moto-Hakone-ko.