Ookawaso

This hotel is beautiful. We came to see Muzan’s infinity castle in real life but it turned out to be so much more. The surroundings are unbelievable. Be warned…It is VERY quiet and tranquil but if that’s why you’re going, you’ll love it. The staff are extremely kind and couldn’t help us enough. We had a traditional Japanese room and it was clean and spacious. The food was wonderful. We used the outside Onsen which was a perfect way to relax.

Stayed two nights in the traditional tatami room. Nightly kaiseki (set menu) with wonderful variety of local dishes. The hotels two main features include the beautiful hotel lobby with the water flowing through and the nightly Shamisen performance. The second is their Onsen with those brave enough in winter to venture to both the outdoor Onsen, it’s well worth frozen toes

It takes a while to get there from Tokyo. By JR line we got to Koriyama then somehow caught a local train and I took us over a hour ride to get to another connecting town Aizuwakamatsu. From there you either take another local train and spend 20 minutes to Ashinomaki, and then get a taxi to the onsen hotel, or the hotel offers free shuttle to pick up guests from both stations. We tried both ways on our round trip, as wanted to see the cat at Ashinomaki station. The hotel itself, a few staff speak English very well and I particularly appreciate Melissa receiving us and introduced everything. The rooms are beautiful and when we stepped in the room it was heavy snow and the whole picture was heartbreakingly pretty. The onsen on cliff was AMAZING. The buffet dinner and breakfast was kind of average but it may only be my taste. One of the things I wanted to mention is that the staff seems to be in shortage or? As I saw the same group of staff just served at dinner and front desk and soon they were working at evenings events, and the day after early morning breakfast. I wanted to thank them for their hard work.