🇯🇵 Japan Trip 2026

The Shinkansen Journey

I won't lie, Osaka definitely didn't feel like our kind of city. Perhaps we were already a bit tired and worn out by all of the travel before, and perhaps we had only seen a sliver of the real city, but this felt like it was much more geared towards young tourists and party-goers. We're getting older now and like the quiet and our refuge. We were kind of relieved that morning to be heading to Hakone, where we had booked a stay in a ryokan - a traditional Japanese style hotel with tatami mat flooring and futons to sleep on. The ryokan had several onsen (hot spring water public baths) and we had also booked a traditional meal. This was going to be the relaxation leg of the journey. Expect fewer photographs!

We caught the Shinkansen at 10:18 from Shin-Osaka to Hakone via Odawara. 2 hours 20 minutes, 5 stops. Shin-Osaka station was way friendlier for finding ekiben food, and we had learned a bit already, so we just bought what we thought we might want to eat on the train, rather than going for the more tourist-aimed bento boxes - yup, more onigiri!

Hakone Suimeisou Ryokan

The walk from the station took all of about 6 minutes. The hotel was set on the river and one road back from the main road running through Hakone. We checked in at reception, and were 30 minutes early, so we had a coffee and sat on the verandah looking out over the river which fell over a set of weirs, creating the constant crash of moving water. The vegetation on the banks was lush and green with large trees foresting a hill on the opposite bank. Everything felt really calm and tranquil.

We stepped through the sliding door and noticed that there were places to leave our shoes and there were traditional sandals to wear around the hotel. The toilet was in the entrance hall, with a pair of slippers to wear in the bathroom. The bathroom and shower were also to one side of the entrance hall. The bathroom and shower looked basic, but that was to be expected. The real bathing was to be done at the onsen. Inside the room, which had a second sliding door to separate it from the entrance hall, the floor was lined with tatami mats. A small low table was in the centre of the room with floor level seats on either side and a cushion each. Other than that, the room was very sparse. Beds, in the form of futons, were rolled up in the cupboard and would be made up by hotel staff after dinner.

In an open cupboard area, were yukata robes to wear around the hotel. Yukata robes are traditionally worn to and from bathing, but in modern times, they are worn more generally around the house or hotel, and some people even wear them out onto the street. The hotel encourages you to wear these during your stay at the hotel, so we changed out of our clothes and put on our yukatas.

These robes do nothing for our good looks!

Well there was nothing else to do, so we each took ourselves off to our respective onsen areas. We didn't take pictures, for reasons that will become apparent shortly, so you will have to take a description instead. Basically, onsen are baths that are heated by volcanic springs. There is some kind of legal requirement for an onsen to use mineralised hot spring water at a minimum of 25°C and ideally originating from a depth of 1.5 km. I don't think that's a hard requirement really, but the waters in our baths were at 40°C - but there was definitely a faint whiff of chlorine, but maybe that was just for cleaning around the area. Bathing is communal but segregated by sex, so men and women bathe separately. Also, bathing is done fully naked, although you can carry a 'modesty towel' to the pool, but this mustn't touch the water, so people usually sit with them on their heads. There are seated showering facilities around the pool with shampoos and body soap. You're expected to shower and clean off before getting into the pool.

The different pools rotate, so that you can experience different onsen pools at different times of the day. And each of the onsens at Suimeisou had an indoor and an outdoor section. Inside, there was a narrow horizontal window that allowed you to see out to the woodlands on the other side of the river. The outside section provided a similar view but you got to sit in the sunlight and experience the fresh air. Both experiences had their merits, and to some degree, I guess it depended on how inhibited you felt.

Ro found that most of his trips to the onsens were reasonably quiet. He bumped into a couple of elderly Japanese men in the changing room, and had someone come into the onsen just as he was getting out of the pool, but in the few visits to the pools he was always in the water alone. I guess that might be considered lucky, but it did miss out on some of the experience of a communal bath.

Massage and Traditional Kaiseki-Ryori Dinner

Ro came back from his first trip to the onsen and discovered that Maria wasn't back. Ah that had been good, and the hotel had mentioned a massage service in the brochure, so he thought he would wander down to reception and see whether he could book that. Reception did the booking for a 45 minute massage, which needed to jam in just before dinner. The masseuse would come to the room and staff would make up the futon. Delighted with himself, Ro headed back to the room. Maria was back, so he announced his imminent massage. "Whose birthday is this?" she joked... so Ro headed back to reception to see if he could book another massage at the same time. Done!

A little before the time for our scheduled massage, a man arrived and took the futons out of the cupboard and made up the bedding on the floor near the window. This meant moving our table back a bit, I expect that our timing for this was a bit off and they might have preferred us to do this after dinner or after breakfast or something. No problems though, and soon two ladies appeared to come and give us each a massage. Fantastic. Both of us felt great afterwards and thoroughly relaxed and ready for dinner and another trip to the onsen.

Dinner was timed for 18h30, so there wasn't time to pack up the futons. We sat ourselves down at the table and the first course was brought through. Our kaiseki meal, served within the room, was a multi-course meal comprised of a selection of small dishes some hot, and some cold. One main course dish, involved setting alight a candle burner under a pan and cooking the food while you were working your way through some of the starter dishes. Maria had opted for the traditional kaiseki-ryori, while Ro had gone for a vegetarian option.

Maria did most of the food pictures, so these show mostly fishy or meaty options. This was hardly an extensive photo-catalogue of all the food that we went through.

There were so many dishes and the food just kept coming. Both of us were stuffed by the end of the meal, which we finished off with ritual matcha poured into a drinking bowl.

Ro's courses were pretty diverse, but there was a lot of tofu and gluten. The gluten can be a bit weird, low in flavour and big in slimy texture, which is quite a thing when fridge cold.

After dinner, Ro went back up to the onsen to have another soak and just to relax a bit more before bed.

Both of us were on our futons and ready to sleep at 21h15... the earliest we had been to bed in a very long time. But today was fully about rest and relaxation. Sorry if the photo shoot is somewhat boring!