Ichiitei — Hotel in Hakone

Most of Japanese “Ryokans” provide guests with a room and dinner and breakfast in a traditional Japanese style at a reasonable price. The first class hotel of this kind pursue the best possible services for the guests with the facilities for good sleep, foods and services. It resembles functionally with the French “auberge” but its style is totally different and more fabulous. My wife and I recently stayed at one of them in Hakone named “ Ichii Tei”( a yew tree house) located close to Sengoku Golf Course and Lake Ashinoko. It has 5 guest rooms to accommodate 10 to 12 guests only. Each has one to two rooms for beds and one large room for sitting and dining. Indeed both dinner and breakfast were served in this room. ||We chose the largest room named “Miyabi”( elegance or gracefulness ) looking out to a fairly large Japanese garden with Hakone Mountain in the back. When we arrived a lady elegantly dressed in Japanese “kimono(dress)” will showed us to our room, served green tea with some sweets to cure fatigue from travelling. After that we changed our clothes into Japanese “kimono” and went to hot spring bath in a separate place. Apart from a small bath room attached to each guest room there are two larger bath rooms for common use by all the guests. You could lock the door while you use it so that guests would not share bath together or hardly meet with each other inside the house. If you like you could ask for massage service in your room which was very relaxing and good at a reasonable rate of 4,500 Yen for 45 minuets to 1 hour payable in cash. ||Dinner is a set menu course (“kaiseki”) prepared for each season by Chef Akitoshi Hamanaka who was brought up in Kyoto and still brings most of foodstuff from Kyoto. He is a quiet and reserved man but had obviously confident complexion. There were effectively ten courses of meals each displayed in a beautiful manner on each different dish, and each brought and served by the same lady mentioned above absolutely in good timing, not slow nor fast. They had, apart from Japanese drinks like “sake”, a good wine list starting from sparkling wine from Louis Roederer and Franciacorta Bellavista, 5 white wines including Puligry Montrachet and Meursault both from Oliver Leaflaive followed by 6 reds including Gevry Chambertin from Rossignol Trapet and Pauillac from La Fleur Milon. I chose Meursault and was absolutely satisfied with it together with all the meals served. A variety of the season vegetables fresh or cooked gave a taste of spring ambience. Three kinds of “sashimi” (raw fish) including tuna were very fresh and delicious though its quantity was rather small. Grilled salmon trout was most tasteful I have ever tried in my long career. Bamboo shoe and baby octopus in seasoned vinegar was nice break and good appetizer before roasted fillet of black Japanese beef was served. The beef was beautiful as most of beef in Japan are but a very small portion not enough to finish even a half bottle of red wine ! What is called as the main course in Japan are boiled rice with “miso” soup and pickled vegetables. Amazing! These were served before desert with the rice cooked specially in an iron pot. Very good.||Before going to bed for which you do not have to change into pajama you could go to bath again to smooth your blood circulation, then breeze air outdoor a little while or watch TV( most updated digital set with DVD player) to bring your body temperature down for good sleep. ||Our lady came with tea for the morning call and prepared a table ready for breakfast. Breakfast is also of pure Japanese including hot or cold cooked vegetables, bean curd served hot, grilled fish, omelet, and freshly boiled rice and “miso” soup and pickles, and fruits. They were all served at once and quite abundant for breakfast but so nice that many Japanese guests for leisure would enjoy this with a small bottle of “sake”.|| In checking out not only our lady but also “Okami-san” (land lady) dressed in even more beautiful and elegant “kimono” carried all our belongings to our car and sent us off most gracefully.|| Staying at a good “Ryokan” is a great experience as it is an unique, private and relaxing way for leisure time with gracious services. Only snag in “Ichii Tei” I have to admit is that as you have to keep sitting on the “tatami” floors or standing in your room you may long for chairs. But actually at a corner of the living room you find a “kotatsu” ( warm sitting table with hollow )in which you could sit on an easy low chair and stretch your legs down to watch TV or closely talk with your partner although getting out of there could be quite hard work. You could also spend time sitting on chairs in a common lounge looking out to the same garden. After all my wife said, “Only snag was that there was no chair in powder room and the down light for a Japanese mirror separately located was too dark”. I would say that is easy to be corrected. The bill finally came up to 80,000Yen ( or 1000 US Dollars ) altogether, excluding massage, for two of us. It offered a good value as the same sum could cover only room-charge of a junior suite in 5-stars hotels in France and Italy. Today Japan is not actually so expensive for the world well-off travelers seeking for best...

Most of Japanese “Ryokans” provide guests with a room and dinner and breakfast in a traditional Japanese style at a reasonable price. The first class hotel of this kind pursue the best possible services for the guests with the facilities for good sleep, foods and services. It resembles functionally with the French “auberge” but its style is totally different and more fabulous. My wife and I recently stayed at one of them in Hakone named “ Ichii Tei”( a yew tree house) located close to Sengoku Golf Course and Lake Ashinoko. It has 5 guest rooms to accommodate 10 to 12 guests only. Each has one to two rooms for beds and one large room for sitting and dining. Indeed both dinner and breakfast were served in this room. ||We chose the largest room named “Miyabi”( elegance or gracefulness ) looking out to a fairly large Japanese garden with Hakone Mountain in the back. When we arrived a lady elegantly dressed in Japanese “kimono(dress)” will showed us to our room, served green tea with some sweets to cure fatigue from travelling. After that we changed our clothes into Japanese “kimono” and went to hot spring bath in a separate place. Apart from a small bath room attached to each guest room there are two larger bath rooms for common use by all the guests. You could lock the door while you use it so that guests would not share bath together or hardly meet with each other inside the house. If you like you could ask for massage service in your room which was very relaxing and good at a reasonable rate of 4,500 Yen for 45 minuets to 1 hour payable in cash. ||Dinner is a set menu course (“kaiseki”) prepared for each season by Chef Akitoshi Hamanaka who was brought up in Kyoto and still brings most of foodstuff from Kyoto. He is a quiet and reserved man but had obviously confident complexion. There were effectively ten courses of meals each displayed in a beautiful manner on each different dish, and each brought and served by the same lady mentioned above absolutely in good timing, not slow nor fast. They had, apart from Japanese drinks like “sake”, a good wine list starting from sparkling wine from Louis Roederer and Franciacorta Bellavista, 5 white wines including Puligry Montrachet and Meursault both from Oliver Leaflaive followed by 6 reds including Gevry Chambertin from Rossignol Trapet and Pauillac from La Fleur Milon. I chose Meursault and was absolutely satisfied with it together with all the meals served. A variety of the season vegetables fresh or cooked gave a taste of spring ambience. Three kinds of “sashimi” (raw fish) including tuna were very fresh and delicious though its quantity was rather small. Grilled salmon trout was most tasteful I have ever tried in my long career. Bamboo shoe and baby octopus in seasoned vinegar was nice break and good appetizer before roasted fillet of black Japanese beef was served. The beef was beautiful as most of beef in Japan are but a very small portion not enough to finish even a half bottle of red wine ! What is called as the main course in Japan are boiled rice with “miso” soup and pickled vegetables. Amazing! These were served before desert with the rice cooked specially in an iron pot. Very good.||Before going to bed for which you do not have to change into pajama you could go to bath again to smooth your blood circulation, then breeze air outdoor a little while or watch TV( most updated digital set with DVD player) to bring your body temperature down for good sleep. ||Our lady came with tea for the morning call and prepared a table ready for breakfast. Breakfast is also of pure Japanese including hot or cold cooked vegetables, bean curd served hot, grilled fish, omelet, and freshly boiled rice and “miso” soup and pickles, and fruits. They were all served at once and quite abundant for breakfast but so nice that many Japanese guests for leisure would enjoy this with a small bottle of “sake”.|| In checking out not only our lady but also “Okami-san” (land lady) dressed in even more beautiful and elegant “kimono” carried all our belongings to our car and sent us off most gracefully.|| Staying at a good “Ryokan” is a great experience as it is an unique, private and relaxing way for leisure time with gracious services. Only snag in “Ichii Tei” I have to admit is that as you have to keep sitting on the “tatami” floors or standing in your room you may long for chairs. But actually at a corner of the living room you find a “kotatsu” ( warm sitting table with hollow )in which you could sit on an easy low chair and stretch your legs down to watch TV or closely talk with your partner although getting out of there could be quite hard work. You could also spend time sitting on chairs in a common lounge looking out to the same garden. After all my wife said, “Only snag was that there was no chair in powder room and the down light for a Japanese mirror separately located was too dark”. I would say that is easy to be corrected. The bill finally came up to 80,000Yen ( or 1000 US Dollars ) altogether, excluding massage, for two of us. It offered a good value as the same sum could cover only room-charge of a junior suite in 5-stars hotels in France and Italy. Today Japan is not actually so expensive for the world well-off travelers seeking for best...

Two years after having visited this hotel for the first time and written a most favourable comment with the title of " An Excellent Japanese Gourmet Inn " I revisited the Ryokan with my wife this week. Initially to us nothing appeared to have changed much except that we missed the "Okamisan" in a gracious Kimono and an elegant mannor to welcome us. We stayed in the same room named "Miyabi" which was clean and tidy as before and so was the large bath room. The lady who looked after us was kind, talkative and efficient. We enjoyed the bath and became well relaxed and looked forward to that dinner we had enjoyed before very much. This time I chose a bottle of Sanceres as we expected a couple of abalone with one in Sashimi and another grilled. These were specilly served free of charge as a campaign in addition to the menu dinner. The menu was in principle same but the taste was quite different and in fact clearly worse. Sashimi was not quite as fresh as before and cooked meals tasted a bit too salty. We checked and found the chef was same Mr. Hamanaka. Quite surprising! We found the Ryakan used salt imported from Christmas Island and it was my guess that the salt does not go along with the Japanese meals.It killed the taste of Bonito and seaweed seasoning. Expenisive abalone was grilled obviously with this salt and spices which killed the flavour of abalone altogether. It was not only the question of quantity of salt used but its quality we found as aproblem. We detected that the food stuff was olso was economized. Mr. Hamanaka could have been aware of this but probably obliged to it. Throughout our stay no manager or like appeared to us to greet which is quite an usual kind gesture of Ryokan. As a conclusion the whole management could have changed worse. This is no longer a...