RYOKANS VS. HOTELS

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Hotel lodging pros and cons:

· They sometimes have coin laundries with washers and dryers. On the other hand, if they don’t and all your clothes are dirty, it might cost you $50-75 to get your laundry done. (And that’s if you only have things washed and folded, not pressed and no dry cleaning.) Anyone who travels with clothes that must be dry cleaned is nuts anyway.

· They offer buffet breakfasts, where you can get just fruit and toast if you want. And their coffee is usually better. On the other hand, Japanese breakfasts are amazing!

· Gives you the chance to go out and find your own food at local restaurants. On the other hand, Japanese dinners, often served in your tatami mat room, are amazing.

About the ryokans:

· In the US, some could be called B&Bs, but most are inns. They often have been in business since the samurai soldiers were traveling around Japan. (The one we’re staying at today is about 360 years old.)

· They are usually small and run by a real host or family member. The welcome is genuine, and though they often don’t speak much English, they try to meet all your needs, even ones you didn’t know you had. Tom wears a size 11 w-i-d-e shoe, and our hosts are ALWAYS upset that they don’t own house slippers that fit him. On the other hand, I wear a women’s size 6 (European 36), and they sometimes find kiddie slippers for me. “It’s OK!” doesn’t work.

· Customs are pretty set and solid – an example, also with shoes: you take your shoes off at the front door and don the slippers provided by your host. (Note to us: take some next time.) You wear those slippers to your room, where you remove them and walk on the tatami (grass) mats that cover the floor of your bed/sitting/dining room. Do NOT walk on the tatami mats with your slippers! Walk to the toilet room (not the bathroom) in your slippers and change them for slippers that are for use ONLY around the toilet. Do NOT wear those slippers anywhere else. They are usually plastic and sometimes are printed with the word “TOILET”.

· Architecture and decoration are intriguing, especially from a western point of view. In the middle of your room is a low table and cushions. When you arrive, your host almost always has the table set up with a tea set, hot water, and a tiny snack. There’s a clothes rack in the corner – a great design that I’d like to duplicate – often a low table with a mirror, and almost always a small alcove with an arrangement of flowers, some artwork, and maybe a book or two. You do NOT use that alcove to store your luggage.

· If you’re served your dinner in your room, the table stays (unless you have a deluxe room with a separate sleeping area) through the meal, then you make sure to leave the space for some reason while elves come in to make your bed.

· Bed components are stored in a large cupboard in your room. You get thick mats, quilts or featherbeds, depending on the temperature, and a pillow. Sometimes the pillow is full of beans (!) and sometimes it will have beans on one side and regular pillow material on the other. Haven’t figured that out yet. If you’re picky, take the cushion from your table.

· One of the best things about meals: you eat something and then say to your companion, “What do you think that was?” Meals are deceptive, because each piece is served in a small, sometimes tiny, dish. A few pickles, some soup, an egg, a piece of fish, etc. Plus rice, of course. When you finish, you realize that all those dainty things added up to an enormous meal. We were served four different kinds of soup as part of dinner last night.

· You get new clothes! At each ryokan, we received a cotton robe, a sash, and a jacket or heavier long robe, depending on the temperatures outside and whether they expected that you’d go outdoors while dressed in your yukata. We learned that you wrap your robe left over right (the man’s way), as only corpses are wrapped with the right side on top. This was a good treat each night, as we’d been traveling in our western clothing and this feels like you’ve reached the end of the day and can relax. Yukatas can be worn at dinner, to breakfast (even if it’s in a dining room) and out around town in some places. Hotels (like the one in Sendai) have to specifically tell Japanese and foreign guests not to walk around in their “pajamas”.

· Bathing is fun – and sometimes awkward. Most of our rooms had private “baths”, which are not the same as a western bathroom. We often had an outer chamber with the sink and two separate chambers, one with the toilet (see above) and one with a short but deep tub. The tub room (“bath”) has a separate hand-held shower or tap, a stool, and a large bowl, and is intended for your use before you get into the tub, which you fill with clean hot water. Plop down on the little stool and wash/rinse completely, including your hair, if you want. Only after you’re completely clean do you struggle to your feet, get into the tub and soak. Tubs are intended to cover you to your shoulders with clean hot water. In most ryokans, we didn’t use our en suite baths, but went down the hall to the “public” baths . Same rules apply: wash completely in the room where the big deep tub of water is, rinse off and jump in. Don’t take your towel with you (leave it in the outer area) – no one really looks. The women are very quiet, but Tom found that the Japanese men were very social and asked him questions about the US, even though none of them could speak the other’s language. Some ryokans have baths, toilets and sinks down the hall.



· Japanese people seem to be delighted when you try to speak Japanese. We learned a few socially convenient phrases: good morning, the food was excellent, thank you, etc. When we tried to speak, the responses were always positive. We also found that Google Translate on Tom’s iPhone worked very well – you can type full sentences and generally they are understood. This was a big improvement on the Google Translate we used in China in 2012.

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Photos

Our Dining Room Table/Desk
This one is covered with a cloth to keep your feet warm. Sometimes there's a heater under it.

Smoky Dining Room
The smoke got to my contacts, so here's a rare photo of my face with glasses.

Ryokan Friends
You often meet strangers and leave friends. The couple was from Kansas; the family was from Singapore.

Dining Room Stove
This one is heating sake carafes. There's no vent, so the room was smoky!