Hotel Izukyu

It was an overnight stay on tour. The room is Japanese-style, with a large window overlooking the large beach with swimming pool and surfers. There were many staff members, and the response felt like a hospitality unique to a long-established restaurant. Dinner is set menu plus buffet in a large room on the ground floor. The staff at each table will explain the food. It was a polite service. The food was all delicious and I was sorry I couldn't eat it because there was so much variety. It was a little inconvenient because I hadn't had a chair in a Japanese-style room in a while.

It is a beautiful location. The staff is really lovely. English is not a barrier. Despite being in a non smoking room the room and floor still smelled quite smokey.

The Izukyu hotel is an aging hotel located on in front of a beautiful beach in Shimoda. Much like a lot of tourist sites in Japan that are not located in major cities, this hotel and town were designed for the Japanese domestic tourism market, and thus foreigner travelers should be warned that this hotel is full of quirks from Japan’s 1980’s bubble heyday.. While the rooms were clean, the common areas of the hotel are sad and dark, and do not look like they have been updated since the hotel was built (and in some cases falling apart). The hotel has Western style and Japanese style rooms, and we opted for the Japanese style rooms since I knew the Western style beds would be just as hard, if not harder than the futons on the floor (and the Japanese rooms were cheaper). The hotel check-in time is 3pm, but they allowed us to check-in early when we arrived at about 2pm– which while nice of them, they repeatedly stated how they were only doing so as a “very special” case. Check-out time is 10am, which is about an hour too early. Between 10am and 3pm, the whole hotel shuts down and feels like a 1980s beachside Japanese version of “The Shining.” The keys are old-style physical keys, that must be turned into the front desk when you go outside. Also, there was a small early spring heat wave when we went, but the hotel’s central air system was still set to heat mode and we could not adjust it – basically our rooms were hot as hell, and it really made sleeping difficult. The hotel has indoor and outdoor public baths, but we did not bother to try them (I am not really a public bath person). The pool as pictured on the website seems to show some sort of tile pattern on the bottom, but it clearly was not there as we could see the pool from our room – I believe the photos on the website are from happier times long ago. The restaurant in the hotel (which we did not eat at but did go check out) is like a giant food hall that plays bizarre videos of local underwater fish scenes (and the dinner menu was pretty pricey). The whole thing reminded me of what it must be like to stay at a hotel in North Korea. The hotel is really a symbol and metaphor, quite sadly, of Japan’s decline from the booming 80s, to the shreds of what is now left of better economic times and long-gone better times. I will note that while the rate we paid (mind you this was during low-season) of 130USD was not outrageous, it definitely should have been far cheaper in my opinion. What is egregious though is that during the summer high-season, these aging mediocre hotels in this area can go for hundreds and hundreds of dollars a night. While the hotel was fine for a one-night stay, I would not pay more than 100USD a night in high-season let alone during low-season for this decaying monument to a bygone era.