Hotel Ambient Izukogen — Hotel in Ito

We spent a week at the Hotel Ambient in December with the in-laws. We were given a large family room in the Annex, which is 5 minutes from the main hotel by car. The rooms are nondescript and are nothing to boast about, although they are large by Japanese standards. The beds were slightly on the hard side although I went native and opted to sleep on the futons on the floor instead.||||First off, the location. ||||Hotel Ambient is a good 15 minute car journey from Izukogen train station. Izukogen is itself a good 30-46 minute train journey from the nearest tourist attractions in the Izu peninsula (and a good 1.5 to 2 hours from Tokyo although not geographically far). ||||If you are thinking of basing yourself in Izukogen in order to explore the beauty of the Izu peninsula, I hope you think very carefully about this. (1) The town centre consists of a few shops along a deserted strip, with one restaurant and no convenience stores in sight. (2) It gets eerily quiet and deserted in the evening and night. (3) The hotel shuttle bus makes the 15 minute journey to the train station only 5 times daily, the latest one being at around 5:30pm. If you miss the last shuttle bus, you'll have to flag down a local taxi to take you back to the hotel, which is quite pricey. (4) The trains arrive at fixed intervals as well. Depending on where you are going, you may end up having to spend over 1 hours just getting from the hotel to the train station to catch the train. It is SIMPLY NOT WORTH YOUR TIME.||||Although the Izu Peninsula is renowned as a place of outstanding beauty, the main tourist attractions lie further west (Hakone) or further north (Ito and Atami). Izukogen is, at best, a sleepy and quaint town nestled by the hills overlooking the coast. There is nothing much to do around the area. If you're a history buff, you can take the train further south to Shimoda to see where Perry & co. landed the black ships. Apart from that, there's nothing else.||||Now for the hotel proper.||||The quality of the hotel is what you would expect from a mid-range run-of-the-mill business hotel. The food that was served in the main building was good, although very expensive. We had no choice but to go with the hotel restaurant as the location of the hotel leaves much to be desired. ||||On the plus side, being so remote, we practically had the whole Annex to ourselves. The onsen in the Annex is nowhere as nice as the onsen in the main hotel. The main hotel boasted outdoor onsens in traditional baths. The onsen in the Annex was basically a large bathing room with a hot tub attached. Having said that, it was still nice to soak in the hot tub at the end of a cold winter's day.||||The one BIG plus point about this hotel was the impeccable service of its staff. As we didn't speak Japanese and the hotel staff barely spoke English, communication was extremely difficult. This did not stop them from trying their best to accede to our requests - even to the extent of loading up Google translate and typing their sentences out hoping for an appropriate translation into English. Some travellers may find this exasperating and tedious, but we really saw the sincerity and service-mindedness of the hotel staff. They were always on the look out for us to ensure that we caught the right train and got the right connections on our day trips out.||||Should you book Hotel Ambient for your next holiday? I would say "no" unless you really enjoy the peace and quiet of the...

If you want to get just a bit off the track but not too far this is one of the hotels to stay at in the area. We stay here at least twice or three times a year. ||||Constantly being upgraded with new managers, as of last year, there is a constant on-going effort to improve the service it is offering. This year they have made a really special effort to improve the non-smoking rooms so they don't still smell of cigarettes, including special machines under the beds, new curtains and bedding and filters in the air-ducts. The decor is also gradually changing, month by month.||||The best rooms are on the third floor so if you can get one on that floor you'll really enjoy your stay.||||There is a bus service from Izu Kogen Station if you need it. Just let them know when you'll be coming and they will be down to pick you up. ||||Spacious lobby, nice pond and there is a quite good evening restaurant but what we have always liked is the buffet service at breakfast so extensive from salads to cereals to Japanese as well as Western. But be careful because in mid-week there is usually no buffet unless it is Golden Week, sumer time or around New Year. Ask if you are big eater before you arrive! ||||They used to have a sand-bath but that seems to have died but there are two, by gender, open-air baths with a kind of massage air bubble machine in the baths. Really relaxing and fabulous to sit out in the rain, even have cute umbrellas if you are worried about getting wet! Highly suggest you go towards the end of the evening when fewer people, if any, are in there. They also have a women's communal bath on the 4th floor if ladies don't want to walk the winding slightly dark covered walk out to the open-air baths. ||||Prices are reasonable slightly higher end but OK. Staff are friendly English ability not so fantastic but willing always to help.||||Lots of places in the nearby area to walk down to or up to, they do have small vans that will cart you around to a location if you like and often for free. ||||They also have self catering cottages at again reasonable prices and if you are bringing the family one of these might be good to stay at for two or more nights. Some of the better cottages are really nice! No need for a car they will take you out and bring you back in to take the open air bath or to have dinner...

Clean, quiet with friendly staff - all you can expect from a Japanese hotel. Even though I was satisfied every time I stayed there (twice as of this day) I can't give it a 5 star as the food is just OK. In the Japanese dinner, raw fish is fresh and good, but the rest seems re-heated. Same for the standard french course, everything is fresh, but the standard braised pork and fish tastes like they were cooked some time ago and were only re-heated. However, for the price (less than JPY 5,000) You cannot really blame them. also, this may be a detail but the pillows, even if they look comfortable, deflate after a while and become thin and hard. As for the rooms, if possible, avoid the 401 corner room as it is close to the women onsen and you can hear the rumbling of the machinery all night long. (It may also be the case for lower floor rooms (301...) Now, one of my favorite is the breakfast, with lots of choice and the possibility to bring back coffee...