Bansuirō Fukuzumi — Hotel in Hakone

Truly a traditional Ryokan experience, serviced by really kind and genuine people. It's about a 5-8 minute walk from Hakone Yumoto station, just follow Google Maps. It's a nice little easy walk along some Hakone shops, cross a little bridge, take in the beautiful river, and then it's right around the corner. ||||It is one of the oldest Ryokans open in Hakone. The original was founded in 1625, but the building was built in 1879. When you enter the building from the front door, it doesn't seem quite as historic Japanese as you expect, in fact, it looks kind of like a hotel lobby. We were actually confused as to whether it was the right place. But the inside of the building, particularly some of the suites/large guest rooms, and some of the sitting quarters upstairs are historic rooms with a lot of cultural history. The staff are happy to give you a tour of the building during the day.||||The inside of the building is quite simple, you have a large lobby with a bar, a side hallway to leads to two amazing gender-separated rotenburo (open air baths) and one of the historic suites. Stairs lead up to the main guest rooms, some of which come with their own little onsen bath. The floor above has more lounge/sitting rooms with historic character. We didn't have time to get the grand tour, but the staff will offer it to you during your stay, as the building is a designated national heritage/cultural site since 2002.||||Service here is impeccable. As soon as you enter the lobby, staff expecting your arrival will greet you by name, give you indoor slippers to change into, and take your street shoes to a back room. They take your luggage, however heavy, straight to your room while you check in. After check in, the front desk man will guy you to your room and settle you in, making and pouring tea for you and explaining all the features/aspects of the room.||||About shoes: Upon entering the building, you get indoor slippers and you wear those indoor slippers throughout the rest of your stay in the hotel. Every time you go out the building, they will bring your street shoes out for you (somehow I guess they remember every person staying and what their shoes look like). Take off your indoor slippers when you are in your room (go bare or sock footed), and please do not wear your bathroom slippers (every bathroom has a pair in front of the toilet) ANYWHERE OUTSIDE THE BATHROOM.||||From here, you are welcome to go in/out the building as you please and frequent the onsens as much as you like. Their onsen facilities are beautiful-- a simple locker room full of nice Kracie face products leads to a large, clean and wonderfully tiled bathing room. Strip, scrub yourself down at the seated faucets/showerheads using the soaps, shampoos, bathing bucket and a towel first, then go for a dip in the luxurious infinity bath pools to get your body up to temperature before the onsen. The baths/onsen when I went were completely empty, as the ryokan is quite small. It should never get too crowded.||||There are two rotenburos (open air onsen) connected to each of the gender separated baths. One is a rock-style onsen, where you have a pool of hot steaming water surrounded by various rocks in a little garden enclosure. Very nice and relaxing, and there is a bench for resting if it gets too hot. The other is a long, rectangular, shallow bamboo tub, surrounded by a bamboo garden enclosure. Both have different aesthetics to them, I actually liked the bamboo one better, even if it was smaller. The rotenburos are gender separated, and they switch every morning at 11:30am, and at night at 10:00pm. So go in the evening and come back in the morning for a different rotenburo experience!||||About onsen water: The rotenburos are kakenagashi onsen, meaning that they are fresh flowing onsen water piped in directly. The onsen baths that some guest rooms have are NOT kakenagashi. They are onsen water that has been filtered/recycled (much like any other water recycling system in cities, etc), and then repumped back. Though nice to have a bath attached, and we spent the money to get a room that has a bath, we spent most of our bath time in the actual rotenburos, because they were so nice and luxurious.||||After a bath generally comes dinner. If you paid for the dinner course, they will ask you what time you want dinner when you check in, options are 6:00, 6:30, 7:00pm. Dinner is a very luxurious affair as well. There are about 5-6 courses in total, each a separate affair where the ryokan lady will come into your room, apologize profusely before placing new surprises and goodies before you, and taking away your old plates. Food is very traditionally japanese, and inflexible tastes may struggle with the menu. I strongly suggest that you try to go for the full experience, as this is a really top notch way of getting an authentic and delicious kaiseki experience.||||My Menu (July):||Course 1: Cold Dishes of a piece of stuffed eel, preserved and salted egg yolk, sweet purple potato, asparagus wrapped with sashimi, some kind of sashimi cerviche. Huge sashimi platter, all good stuff :)||Course 2: Fried Tofu Puree, dipped in sesame and served with sesame sauce, soup with egg and some kind of fish (?) soup||Course 3: The highlight: Top top top notch Wagyu beef cubes (3) (filet mignon +++) with some vegetables, cook yourself over a little stove pot. Best meat I've ever eaten in my life, it just literally melted in my mouth. They don't have meat like this in the states!||Course 4: Ochazuke (Rice with toppings with tea poured on top)||Course 5: Citron Soba with Fig Tempura||Course 6: Black sesame pudding, peach puree dessert||||After dinner, they will spread out the futons for you-- surprisingly comfy! I had a really good night's sleep, lulled by the sound of the river outside. Very quiet and peaceful.||||Breakfast in the morning is another luxurious affair-- single course, but huge. The table was SPREAD. Rice, Fish, Soup, Salad, Steamed Tofu, Pickles, Egg Omelette, Yogurt and Fruit... It was delicious :)||||Might want to go for another bath after breakfast, and the staff can give you a grand tour of the ryokan as well. And then off for a fun day in Hakone! We only stayed a night, but I'd definitely want to come back again. ||||I can't say enough about the service here. Everyone was so kind and polite-- I speak a little Japanese, but they have English friendly instructions, and if you make a little effort to try to understand or speak a little, the staff are happy to go the extra mile to make everything go smoothly.||||Why did I write an essay? Because there are very few other english reviews! Go people, this...

i book the room from their own website, there's many differnt type of room and stay plan to select, every room is different.||i choice the room with bathtub which you can take a spring inside the room and with breakfast and dinner. totally japanese style.||they ask the guests age arange to arrange the private service staff for you, so sweet.||every detail is perfect.||the room is very big, every party has their own story, every facility with good fuction. the view out of the windows is the garden and the river but the garden no open. ||the breakfast and dinner are sooo amazing, not only the tasy but also the view, very japanese style, and really really a lot, everytime we are eatting veyr full.||the location is perrty good, not far from the main station but you need the walk though the shopping street, so you can see many things, but it's in a very quite conner but not difficult to find. ||the sping is good, clean and quite, two differnt pool with two different outside pool, in feb, outside is a little cold but the spring has great temperature. there's not street or river view but the pool's around is nice enough and private enough, the two different pool will switch for male and female every day roung 10pm. ||the hotel itself is a history building for about 300 years old? as far as i remember, but keeped very good. just walking inside is a kind of enjoy.||the staff are perfect too, our waitress is very very cute and nice, even help us take a photo and pertty good photo. and because we are not that good in japanese, when she interduce the meals she even help us to mark the menus, try to help us to understand what we eat.||it's a traditional hotel, so only the front desk's staff can speak english, so if you can't speak simple japanese there's manybe some diffciulty to communicate. but not that diffciult, they will think most of the things before the guests. so, don't miss the gem hotel if visit hakone.||the price is not cheep, but compare the service and stay quility, i think it's...

i book the room from their own website, there's many differnt type of room and stay plan to select, every room is different.||i choice the room with bathtub which you can take a spring inside the room and with breakfast and dinner. totally japanese style.||they ask the guests age arange to arrange the private service staff for you, so sweet.||every detail is perfect.||the room is very big, every party has their own story, every facility with good fuction. the view out of the windows is the garden and the river but the garden no open. ||the breakfast and dinner are sooo amazing, not only the tasy but also the view, very japanese style, and really really a lot, everytime we are eatting veyr full.||the location is perrty good, not far from the main station but you need the walk though the shopping street, so you can see many things, but it's in a very quite conner but not difficult to find. ||the sping is good, clean and quite, two differnt pool with two different outside pool, in feb, outside is a little cold but the spring has great temperature. there's not street or river view but the pool's around is nice enough and private enough, the two different pool will switch for male and female every day roung 10pm. ||the hotel itself is a history building for about 300 years old? as far as i remember, but keeped very good. just walking inside is a kind of enjoy.||the staff are perfect too, our waitress is very very cute and nice, even help us take a photo and pertty good photo. and because we are not that good in japanese, when she interduce the meals she even help us to mark the menus, try to help us to understand what we eat.||it's a traditional hotel, so only the front desk's staff can speak english, so if you can't speak simple japanese there's manybe some diffciulty to communicate. but not that diffciult, they will think most of the things before the guests. so, don't miss the gem hotel if visit hakone.||the price is not cheep, but compare the service and stay quility, i think it's...