Beppu Showaen — Hotel in Beppu

Japanese restaurants from around the world should come to see how traditional Japanese dinner meal set (Kaiseki) should be. When you go travel around each ryokan throughout Japan, you might face the old dishes again and again, but not at here. For example, Gratin with crab white sauce and sweet pear that getting along well with scallop and autumn-maple-leaf-shaped biscuit decoration, or the pumpkin soup that made the pumpkin-haters as me say it was so completely delicious. How the superb fusion creativity of Japanese food they are!||My impression started from the check-in green tea, that the little salty made that welcome tea so delicious that what I have ever had before. (Not to mention that they would give you two kinds of tea-leave blends in your house (Yes, I stayed in the standalone house with personal outdoor onsen behind to prevent cold sickness during cloth changing. That sweet house has beautiful view of small dam (with waterfall) and forest beside, so you could hear the water-running sound all day and night especially during onsen session.)||The Kaiseki came with Japanese-English menu list so you could understand all dishes easily. For me, they arranged dinner and breakfast directly at my room. And what was special and different from other ryokan was they consequently served you many dishes (with many beautiful tableware, not just in one bento box as some ryokan), on the big table, and gave you the time as much as you like to gradually take photos (of course!) and eat. When you have them enough, just phone call to the reception to let them come and clean for you.||Even the breakfast was superb, not just light common meal as others. Their creativity still there as well such as the tofu with soy milk soup in nabe style that is so good for your health. And especially the orange tea (I cannot remember what they called) that was served after the breakfast was so so refreshing and delicious.||Let me conclude, if you would like to choose the onsen ryokan best on their Kaiseki specialty, choose here. Not to say their other advantages such as the location that is just right beside the famous theme park/zoo on the hill, Rakutenchi (so of course, the bus stop was right there.), and rather near the Beppu train station in my opinion (just 869 yen taxi ride), the Beppu onsen water that is the second best of the world after the Yellowstone (if I could remember), and super hyper and happy service that come to help bringing your luggage since the front of their gate (I think they monitored via CCTV) I guess during the autumn peak period ( I went there on Dec 5-7th so some red maple trees had been fallen, but there were some trees were still red beautiful as well), the garden around the ryokan that was full of maple trees would be so perfectly beautiful.||Please note that the changing area for onsen (both personal and public onsen) was outdoor as well so you may have to face with super cold wind with your bare skin a little, not to mention the other areas of the house such as the toilet and bathroom that the main heater is not cover to. But the thing I love in the house was the perfect electrical warming carpet that made me love to sit or sleep there all...

Japanese restaurants from around the world should come to see how traditional Japanese dinner meal set (Kaiseki) should be. When you go travel around each ryokan throughout Japan, you might face the old dishes again and again, but not at here. For example, Gratin with crab white sauce and sweet pear that getting along well with scallop and autumn-maple-leaf-shaped biscuit decoration, or the pumpkin soup that made the pumpkin-haters as me say it was so completely delicious. How the superb fusion creativity of Japanese food they are!||My impression started from the check-in green tea, that the little salty made that welcome tea so delicious that what I have ever had before. (Not to mention that they would give you two kinds of tea-leave blends in your house (Yes, I stayed in the standalone house with personal outdoor onsen behind to prevent cold sickness during cloth changing. That sweet house has beautiful view of small dam (with waterfall) and forest beside, so you could hear the water-running sound all day and night especially during onsen session.)||The Kaiseki came with Japanese-English menu list so you could understand all dishes easily. For me, they arranged dinner and breakfast directly at my room. And what was special and different from other ryokan was they consequently served you many dishes (with many beautiful tableware, not just in one bento box as some ryokan), on the big table, and gave you the time as much as you like to gradually take photos (of course!) and eat. When you have them enough, just phone call to the reception to let them come and clean for you.||Even the breakfast was superb, not just light common meal as others. Their creativity still there as well such as the tofu with soy milk soup in nabe style that is so good for your health. And especially the orange tea (I cannot remember what they called) that was served after the breakfast was so so refreshing and delicious.||Let me conclude, if you would like to choose the onsen ryokan best on their Kaiseki specialty, choose here. Not to say their other advantages such as the location that is just right beside the famous theme park/zoo on the hill, Rakutenchi (so of course, the bus stop was right there.), and rather near the Beppu train station in my opinion (just 869 yen taxi ride), the Beppu onsen water that is the second best of the world after the Yellowstone (if I could remember), and super hyper and happy service that come to help bringing your luggage since the front of their gate (I think they monitored via CCTV) I guess during the autumn peak period ( I went there on Dec 5-7th so some red maple trees had been fallen, but there were some trees were still red beautiful as well), the garden around the ryokan that was full of maple trees would be so perfectly beautiful.||Please note that the changing area for onsen (both personal and public onsen) was outdoor as well so you may have to face with super cold wind with your bare skin a little, not to mention the other areas of the house such as the toilet and bathroom that the main heater is not cover to. But the thing I love in the house was the perfect electrical warming carpet that made me love to sit or sleep there all...

Alas, that's pretty much the only good thing I could say about this ryokan. ||It should be a warning signal - a "higher-end" ryokan with only 11 rooms still had availablility weeks before the year end festive holidays. We booked anyway coz the ryokan's website looked nice (misleadingly).||The entrance and the path leading to the main property was pretty. Staff were very polite and friendly. ||Our room was huge, divided into: a bedroom with 2 twin beds, living room, bathroom, another tiny corner room where they store utensils, a small sitting area in front of the windows. Major shock came when we entered the bedroom, I saw a BIG patch of pre-historic stain on the comforters of each bed. I have never seen anything like this at any ryokans we stayed before, even though some of those ryokans were only charging half the price Showaen was charging us (JPY82000 for 2 persons per night)!||Aside from the stains, the bedroom was dated and dreary. Actually the whole place looked dismal and in need of updating, there were marks on the walls which they didn't even bother to wipe off. ||I refused to sleep in the bedroom and requested to have futon beds set up in the living room with different sets of comforters. ||Dinner was not bad, but not good either (in terms of presentation and quality), and certainly not what we expected with the price we paid per night. ||The hot spring bath experience was truly "unforgettable". This was the first time I went to an in-house open hot spring bath with an OPEN changing area as well. It being late December, I had to change and shower in freezing cold in open air, before I could dive into the hot spring. But then I faced the same problem when I came out of the bath, even worse coz this time I was all wet! And worst of all, do not expect hot water to come out of the shower head right away, it took a long while - long enough to get you pneumonia being naked and wet in freezing cold weather. Aside from the separate hot spring bath for men & women, the ryokan also provides a private open air bath which guests can reserve for free. This was nice, but again, you have to change and shower in freezing cold air.||This ryokan was really poor value for money. ...