Ikoi No Mura Heritage Minoyama

A Japanese-style room with two meals per night. The room is clean but old. The floor and door creak. The structure is not so good that you have to move the door to open it. (For example, the closet won't open unless you move the chair.) The food is average. The good thing is the large communal bath, the dressing room and the bathroom are spacious, clean and very good. It might be good if you don't have meals in a renovated room.

I stayed here with my family. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom and the view from our room overlooking Chichibu was amazing ^_^ The hot spring is on the second floor and there is no open-air bath, but the bathtub is spacious and the water temperature is 39 degrees, so it wasn't too hot and we were able to relax. The view from the bath was also great. The only disappointment was the dinner service. Some staff were in a hurry, while others were slow to serve the food at their own pace, so the tempo was just bad. In stark contrast, the breakfast staff were very friendly and we enjoyed our meal. The amenities were at the level of a cheap business hotel. This is a recommended place to stay if you want to enjoy nature and the views.

Even though I booked the shuttle bus properly, it wasn't on the list and the driver called me a liar, and the bus on the way back was left behind and left 5 minutes early. If they were targeted and treated like that, I think it was a great team effort.

We stayed at the standard course with my family of three, including my daughter who is in kindergarten. The dinner menu was limited and there was nothing to go with rice. Each person had a small pot of sukiyaki-style seasoning, but the taste was light and the meat was tough. The tempura was only vegetables, with maitake mushrooms, carrots, radishes, and cauliflower. It came with a light tempura sauce, but this also did not taste like a side dish for rice. The appetizers and small dishes were all in one container and were mainly vegetables. The appetizers included baked apples and sweet potato yokan. It seemed like they were added to forcefully increase the number of dishes. For the final meal, you can choose handmade udon, so we had udon for one meal. It seems to be a specialty of this place, but the noodles were not very chewy. They can be easily cut with chopsticks. They break apart while eating. The taste is also light. Since it was like this, we didn't order any alcohol, finished in less than 30 minutes, got the car out, went down the mountain, bought lunch boxes at a nearby "Hotto Motto" and ate them in the room. The breakfast was normal, but as expected it was mainly vegetables and the portions were small. There was natto and salmon (half a fillet), so we managed to eat it. If this had been less than 10,000 yen per person, I would have been satisfied, but 27,200 yen including my daughter's facility usage fee seems expensive. The facility usage fee is 880 yen, so for adults it was just over 13,000 yen including tax. It felt very expensive. The good things were that the rice cooked in a kamado was delicious, and they offered free coffee after breakfast. Overall, I don't think it was worth the price. The bath was brought in from a hot spring, but there was no open-air bath. There were no snacks that you often find in a ryokan when you arrive in the room. Many of the tatami mats were frayed, and your stockings were ruined. If you go with the image of a youth hostel or a national guesthouse, you can probably tolerate a lot of places, but at this price I will never go again. There are other good places to stay.