Hotel Kirishima Castle

Pros: • spacious bedroom room with separate tatami living room • free onsen drinking water available for guests at lift lobby area at our level • friendly and polite staff - especially the elderly staff tending to the shabu shabu & yakiniku counter during dinner time (didn’t get her name but she’s the best!) • very spacious onsen area Cons: • whole building’s furnishing is rather dated (but it depends on how you look at it; this may be a good thing in others’ eyes) • cramp toilet gives off a faint smell of sulfur (which cannot be avoided given the area’s onsen is sulphuric-based) • outdoor onsen is rather small

This one-night hotel stay was set up for us by our contact person from Kagoshima University. After a day of touring the Ebino Plateau to see the hot steam vents, lakes, forests, and mountains in the GeoPark area, we enjoyed coming to this relaxing hotel for our dinner plus bathhouse visits. I used the outdoor bath and my husband had time to use both the indoor and outdoor baths - we appreciated the sulfur-accented water which was the perfect temperature for us. The dining room was busy for dinner and breakfast the next morning but we were able to get as much delicious food as we needed and found seats with our friends with no trouble. There were plenty of meal choices and I was able to try a few things I hadn't yet tried during my previous 10 days in Japan. I love fish, so it was easy to find delicious varieties to try - I even ate the heads this time! There also seemed to be plenty of pastries, eggs, ham, and bacon for those who love all of that. Everything including the bathroom fixtures functioned as expected including the kettle for heating water for tea. The mid-range style of the room was about the same as we normally look for when we travel within California - not luxury and not the lowest-price option but somewhere in the comfortable middle. (Which in most parts of CA now costs around $200-$250 per night.) We pre-paid our lodging expenses as part of our excursion with the Kagoshima University faculty so they got us a better deal than if we had paid through the internet. A few standouts from the hotel: We liked the robes and sandals provided for getting back and forth to the baths and were surprised to see that at this hotel people would also wear those robes to the dining room. We had a room with western-style beds but it also included a tatami area where we could relax with some tea. I guess if we were traveling with more family members we could have set up futon beds in that room as well.

I went to a day trip hot spring on a weekday afternoon After paying the bath fee at the front desk, they told me that I could not enter the bath until after 15:30, so I waited on the sofa at the back of the reception for about 15 minutes. To go to the bath, go down the stairs from the back of the souvenir shop and walk The dressing room is quite large. The tub had a large tub further down the stairs from the dressing room The water was a little hot, and the number of washing places was quite large It's kind of getting old.