Ryokan in Itou

Next vacation, forget sight-seeing. I am going to spend all my time at an onsen ryokan.

An onsen was one of the events I was most anticipating on our trip. Onsen are natural hotsprings that well up from the ground. Seasoned travelers would visit onsens on long journeys, to soak away weariness. At some point, someone clever built a hotel beside a hotspring and an industry was born.

Nowadays, the onsen are mostly regulated by a city-wide guild to ensure that all onsen ryokan have egalitarian access to the hot spring supply and that the onsen service is fairly uniform. All onsen ryokan have public bathing hours, where anybody can visit and pay a fee to soak. Only overnight guests have access to the ryokan after a certain time. And the ryokan themselves still vary in quality from inexpensive hostels to expensive resorts.

It was early this week we realized if we did not book somewhere, and soon, we might miss the opportunity to stay at an onsen ryokan. We had set aside a considerable amount of money so that we could stay at nice onsen ryokans at least three times during our vacation. Because we had not managed one stay once during our travels, we had a lot of money for our accomodation. Doing what any sensible person would do in our position, we decided to spend it all on one, extravagant stay.

We ventured online to find the most expensive room we could find. Sadly, all the rooms were booked. Frustrated, we asked at the travel info centre whether they represented any onsen ryokan. And as fate would have it, they did.

The ryokan we visted was located in Itou, a small seaside town about on a southern penninsula between Tokyo and Nagasaki. The ryokan had five baths: two public baths, segregated by gender; two private family baths, that could be booked for private use; and a rotenburo, an outdoor bath, which could also be reserved for private use.

The room was enormous. It was larger than our first apartment, we a pleasant view of the city. It had its own sitting room and was large enough to sleep about ten. Or more, if everyone was real friendly-like.

We entered the ryokan weary and sore, and left feeling invigorated and refreshed. Sadly, it did not cost nearly as much as we had intended to spend.