Shuku Kaifuu

Please, please read this review and consider it. A Korean, a fellow Korean, puts in the effort to write a review for Koreans. I don't understand why this place is ranked #1 on TripBest. After using it, I realized it's probably just a hotel popularized by Koreans searching for blog posts and Instagram photos. There are plenty of ryokans in the area, so if the price is the same, I urge you to go somewhere else. In our case, it was a sudden decision, so we were pressed for time. We trusted the #1 Trip.com rating without searching elsewhere, but just looking at the Google ratings, you can immediately see that the Japanese reviews are dissatisfied. (During our stay, out of 10 groups, 5 were Korean, 4 were Chinese, and 1 was Japanese, so it's clear that even Japanese people don't visit. It's truly Koreans who keep this hotel afloat.) The only real advantage is its oceanfront location. Please, no one should be a victim like my family. Reasons for not recommending: 1. Uncleanliness: The building itself is a ryokan, so the private baths and rooms are made of wood, so dozens of cockroaches are a given. Seeing cockroaches scurrying up and down the outdoor bath and across the towels makes me want to stop using those towels. (If a review says you didn't see any cockroaches, you were just lucky. They were everywhere. Every restaurant didn't have an elevator.) The chairs in the room were broken. I sat down, and the handles were already missing, and the backs wouldn't even rise. This wasn't retro. It was just the filth of years. 2. Unfriendly: I'd clearly called the hotel the day before and on the day of, and they kindly told me everything was ready, so I trusted them and went. However, when I checked in, they told me the large public bath on the second floor wasn't available. I thought, "It's a shame, but I guess that's how it is and I can just use another place." However, the open-air bath was so inconvenient that I went back to ask why the public bath wasn't available. The answer, "Because it wasn't cleaned," was unfathomable. I asked another staff member, and they changed their explanation to "Because the ceiling was broken." So, I said I wanted to speak to another manager, and after waiting 30 minutes to meet with a higher-ranking staff member, they replied, "In that case, we'll let your family use the public bath for two hours." So I asked, "The other staff members didn't clean it and said it was broken?" The shocked silence I saw for three seconds is unforgettable. We expressed our dissatisfaction with preferential treatment, saying we were paying the same price and asking why we couldn't use it. I saw the absurd audacity of the staff to deny access to this space to visitors simply because it wasn't cleaned. It's a random hotel where you pay the same price and can use the facilities some days and not others. He asked me to show him how broken it was, so we went together, and there was nothing broken. All he could see was the worn-out parts of the facility. Instead, he was hastily filling the public bath with water, even though he said he'd let us use it. Seriously... 3. Communication difficulties: The staff only speak Japanese. I can't understand English. Except for the two desk staff, all the staff are Vietnamese, so their English and Japanese are limited. If you don't speak Japanese, it's extremely inconvenient. Even when I tried to communicate through the app, they kept looking confused. (They kept pretending not to understand, and the staff took turns telling me to use the public bath three times because the water was already running.) 4. Poor dinner and meals: The dinner and breakfast were absolutely poor. They tasted terrible. 5. Inconvenient location: There's literally nothing around the hotel. A convenience store is a 15-minute walk away. If you take a taxi like we did, you're completely isolated. I promised to leave a review so that no other Koreans suffer the same fate as we did. They offered to let us use the large public bath, but we declined. It's not that we didn't speak Japanese. One of my family members has been living in Japan for 10 years. Yet, this ryokan is deceiving its customers. If you're paying this much, please go somewhere else. It's such a waste of money for us Koreans to visit just for a few photos. I've been to many Japanese ryokans, but this is the worst I've ever seen. Seriously, please... Please go somewhere else. ㅠㅠㅜㅜㅠ

The room had a great view and was spacious enough. The staff didn't speak English very often, so communication was a bit difficult. The hot springs were very comfortable, but the breakfast was purely Japanese and lacked variety.

It is a family-run hot spring hotel with very good service. The service staff will take us to carefully introduce the location of each hot spring. There are hot springs on the second, third, fifth and eighth floors of the hotel, which can be enjoyed very comfortably. The hotel's meals are both exquisite and delicious, allowing people to enjoy both visually and tastefully. The store is very attentive to provide comfortable service for each guest. Because we had to catch the bus the next day, the store specially arranged an early breakfast time and thoughtfully prepared a shuttle to take us to Utsumi Station. Personally, I think it is a hot spring ♨️ hotel with a high cost performance, which is highly recommended.

This is a resort hotel that you would want to stay in again after staying there once. The hotel is right by the sea, close to the sea and beautiful scenery. There are guest rooms and hot spring pools from the third to the eighth floor of the hotel. There are mixed bathing for men and women, private baths and separate pools for men and women in different time periods. The interior of the hotel is full of rich Japanese style. The guest rooms are large with independent bathrooms, bedrooms and reception rooms, and the balcony is perfect for enjoying the sunset facing the sea. The hotel staff is very polite and enthusiastic, and can speak simple English. It is suitable for a relaxing vacation.