Jū (Kinosaki)

Monday 13 July 2015

Accommodation: Morizuya booked on www.booking.com.
¥32,400 (about £245) for Japanese style twin room with shared bathroom. Plus ¥350pp city tax. Half board (dinner & breakfast)

A whole town of spas

I first discovered Kinosaki in a Japanese guidebook before we booked our flight. Described as an onsen town where you walk about in yukata (summer kimonos) from hot springs to hot springs – a whole town of spas – it sounded fantastic!

The hotels in Kinosaki were a lot more expensive than other places that we visited but the reviews of Morizuya sounded great so we decided to splash out for a night.

Exchange rates

As I have been (s-l-o-w-l-y) writing my blog, I’ve noticed that the exchange rate has changed quite a lot since we went. For example, converting what we paid for Morizuya now, it is £245, but last July it was only £170.

The amount of Japanese Yen you will get for GBP seems to have plummeted in the last year. Looking at a five year chart of GBP:Yen, it looks like we got super lucky and travelled when GBP were at their peak against Yen which explains why we found everything so cheap.

Arriving in Kinosaki

We arrived at Kinosaki late morning, via the local train from Takeno, where we had spent the previous night. If we had arrived on one of the main trains, I think (based on what people said in reviews) that someone from the ryokan would have been there to meet us and drive us and our luggage to Morizuya. So we picked up a local map from tourist information (in the little train station) and wandered through the streets of Kinosaki for about 10 minutes.

The little town of Kinosaki is lovely. There’s a river running through it with a quiet street on either side and small bridges across. The river is full of giant goldfish and the streets are lined with trees. There’s a display of shelves of geta (Japanese wooden slippers) outside the train station.

There is a big drinking fountain of onsen water which explains the medicinal qualities of consuming it. There’s also a few open air onsens dotted about which you can sit down and put your feet in.

The hotel owner takes a lot of pride in impressing his guests so I’m sure it wasn’t ideal for him that we unexpectedly arrived early. We were greeted by a little old Japanese lady, took our shoes off and sat at a table in reception. The owner of the ryokan arrived and greeted us warmly. He explained that it was too early to check in but took our bags.

After dumping our bags, we went on the search for food. The map had restaurants on it and we decided on a sushi restaurant called Orizuru. We were the only people there and had a tasty (if somewhat expensive) lunch of sushi and sushimi, sitting up at the bar.

Kinosaki Onsen Ropeway

After lunch, we decided to head up the Kinosaki Onsen Ropeway to see the view of Kinosaki from the top of Mt. Daishi.

To get the the ropeway, we walked towards the back of the town. You could choose to walk one way but we decided to get the cable car both ways which was quite cheap.

At the top of Mount Daishi, we got an ice-cream from the cafe and had a wander around. There are a few temples, and you can write a wish and hang it up.

By the time we had a walk around and headed back down the ropeway, we were able to check into our ryokan.

Ryokans and yukatas

When we got back to Morizuya, the owner was ready for us an enthusiastically showed us around his ryokan. It was fabulously Japanese and we had a huge traditional style room, complete with sliding doors and a balcony overlooking the street. We had a sink and toilet in our room. Despite the traditional style of the room, we had a very high tech toilet with buttons for everything including opening/closing the toilet seat.

The owner showed us to a big room full of toys (for any kids staying – Kinosaki in general seemed very child friendly) and a huge selection of yukatas and asked me to pick one to have for the duration of our stay.

I picked a yukata, sash and flower for my hair and was shown how to put it on. There was also a more plain yukata in our room for David to wear.

In Kinosaki, you can wear these the whole time along with the wooden clogs called geta. You then totter about the town heading from onsen to onsen! While we were sitting on our balcony we saw groups of people walking by with their yukata on.

Private onsens

Before dinner, we decided to check out the hotel’s onsens. There are two, which you can use privately for an hour during certain times. Not hugely keen on the whole public onsen experience, this sounded much more appealing!

We wandered along the halls to the first onsen, each sporting our yukatas, which was unoccupied. The first area is a little carpeted room where you undress and leave your clothes. You then walk through to a much bigger room which has showers and stools and a big tub, full of hot water.

You sit at the stools and wash yourself before going into the tub (have a look at my Takeno blog post for some onsen etiquette that I picked up). After the indoor tub (to get super clean maybe?), there is an outdoor onsen. Both the indoor and outdoor tubs are filled with hot springs water.

The outdoor bath is a natural onsen with hot spring water. It is made of rocks with plants and flowers surrounding it and is very lovely and relaxing.

After relaxing for a while, we got ready in the first little room and headed back to our room in our yakatas ready for dinner.

Dinner in Kinosaki – wow

As I mentioned earlier, we paid about £85pp for our stay, which included dinner and breakfast. The dinner alone would have cost you £85 in some places, it was fabulous!

We sat down on the floor at the low table in our room and little Japanese ladies just kept on bringing food in!

We had sushimi, crab, Sukiyaki (Japanese hot pot with thin slices of beef), other beef to sear ourselves on a hot plate and (very randomly) a chicken pie! The food was so delicious and there was so much of it. They also serve a pot of rice but we didn’t touch that. (I have heard it is rude to eat the rice as it tells the chef you weren’t satisfied with the food but that wasn’t a problem!).

After all that, dessert was brought in! I’m not as big a fan of sweet Japanese food than I am of savoury but tried everything.

Public onsen

After dinner, it was time to brave the public onsens!! We came to Kinosaki so it had to be done! Sporting our yukatas we put our towels and onsen passes (free with hotel stay) into bags we were given and picked up some geta at the hotel reception.  After posing for a few photos taken by the owner, we headed to the streets of Kinosaki to clomp about like the locals.

Our Kinosaki map pointed out the seven public hot springs in the town and the owner of the hotel told us which one was closed on a Monday and recommended that we try Goshono-yu. This is the newest and largest of the public hot springs. Details of the seven public hot springs is available on the Kinosaki Onsen website.

Some people go to Kinosaki and go to all seven onsens but we decided on just one as we’d already visited the ryokan’s onsen earlier. Entrance to the public onsens is ¥600-800 for adults and ¥300-400 for children but we were able to get in for free with our onsen passes from the ryokan.

The onsen is separated into male/female spas and at the entrance we took off our geta and each headed our separate ways. I went into the ladies changing area which was just like an open plan changing room of a fancier gym in the UK. There were benches in the middle and lockers around the sides…and lots of naked Japanese ladies. Totally unfazed (not really), I stripped off, put my yukata in a locker and headed through to the onsen wondering what to cover with the tiny towel you can take in!

You are (of course) not allowed to take in cameras but I found a picture of the onsen online. There is an area to shower with stools and shampoo etc so I washed there first before heading into the hot water. There is an indoor and outdoor area and I took my tiny towel and headed to the outdoor area. The outdoor onsen faces a waterfall and it was really lovely to relax under the dark sky, if a little hot hiding in the water.

After a while, I stopped being self-conscious about being naked. Everyone there is naked so who cares?! I got too hot in the water, sat on the rocks at the side and ended up chatting to an American woman, talking about our travels around Japan and how normal being naked with strangers feels after a while!

I left the onsen feeling very proud of myself and met David outside. He’d had a slightly less relaxing experience saying that an older Japanese gentleman had summoned David to join him in the outdoor onsen and then tried to make conversation in Japanese!

After briefly describing our onsens to each other, I think the ladies side was slightly fancier but believe they change the sides around regularly.

We clomped along the streets of Kinosaki in our geta and headed back to the ryokan for the night.

Breakfast in Koyasan

Unbelievable, neither of us took pictures of breakfast but (using TripAdvisor pics to jog my memory) it was very traditionally Japanese and extravagant like dinner. We had a fillet of salmon, rice, miso soup and a few other things. This time a ham salad was the random Western addition! After we had eaten, I started to get ready and was brushing my teeth when one of the little old ladies came in with dessert!

Kinosaki photoshoot

When we checked out of the ryokan, the owner posed with us outside for some photos and then put our luggage in his car to drive us back to the train station.

On the way he stopped at many points and took photos of the two of us which was very nice of him. The only problem is that it was sunny, I didn’t have sunglasses and have very sensitive eyes so the majority of photos I am either squinting in or have my eyes shut!

He did manage to get a few with my eyes open before dropping us off at the station and waving us off to Nagoya.

Our one night in Kinosaki was just as fabulous as I’d expected when I find read about ‘a town full of spas’ in a Japan guidebook the year before. I’m so glad that we decided to go and splash out on an expensive (but actually very reasonably priced) traditional ryokan and would highly recommend it to anyone planning a trip to Japan. It’s slightly out of the way from the main cities but easily accessible by train and well worth a visit for the onsens, ryokan and amazing food. If you go slightly later in the season, they also have firework displays every night for tourists to enjoy.

And if you’re considering going but freaking out slightly about getting naked with lots of strangers…everyone’s naked so who cares?! Just make sure you brush up on your onsen etiquette!