As part of our visit to Mt Fuji, we spent a night at a traditional Japanese ryokan. Tounosawa Ichinoyu Honkan was originally built in 1630 along a river that carves a path through the mountains near Mt Fuji, in an area filled with natural hot springs. Driving down into the narrow valley, especially knowing about the thermal bathhouses in the area reminded me of our visit to Baden-Baden, Germany last fall. Perhaps this is their Japanese sister-city?
This ryokan is a small old wooden inn. We were in a suite of rooms on the third floor with tatami floors divided by wood and tatami screens into an entryway, then a sleeping/dining area, then an enclosed balcony with access to our private bath and onsen (a little stone room with a small spring-fed hot tub). The ryokan also had a public onsen and a reservable family onsen. The public onsen is open half of the time only to men, the other half only to women, to protect the modesty of both.
When we checked into the ryokan, we removed our shoes and placed them in lockers near the entrance and were given sandals to wear inside (though Trevis’ feet were too big so he just wore socks). They assigned us a time for dinner and breakfast and pointed out where we could pick out a robe to wear if we wanted.
Dinner, served in the dining room on the fourth floor, was kind of an adventure, speaking not Japanese and being unfamiliar with traditional Japanese cuisine (outside of sushi). We had a bunch of small bowls and boxes of food and/or ingredients placed in front of each of us and a hotpot of broth was heating up on the table. The waiter explained the menu to us, in Japanese, so we didn’t understand. So we fumbled around for a bit before sort of figuring things out. The hotpot was followed by a baked fish and then a selection of bite-sized desserts. Breakfast turned out to be a similar meal, with different things in the small bowls.
The last thing to mention is the bedroom. When we arrived, there was a low table and seats in the center of the room. At bedtime we needed to move these out of the way in order to assemble the futon mattresses, which were folded away along with blankets and pillows behind a screen in the entry area of our room. A little like camping! We even had the sound of the river coming in through the windows to lull us to sleep.
