Karuizawa Hotel Longing House — Hotel in Karuizawa

This is the only one (zero if I could) star experience I have had in Japan during the last few years/ever. The "ambiance" of the main building is of an old, worn out and well beyond its prime British hotel. Things are stale there. Nobody cared to explain this however you can only reserve a private onsen once a day for 45 minutes. The onsen rooms are all private and there are no other options. For dinner we were put in a small room, not the main restaurant, where the food was the worst I have ever had in Japan. On top of that they wanted a tip of 500 yen per person. One of the greatest things in Japan is the high quality service and products (food, etc) and that no one torments you for tips, like in the USA. This was low quality experience with a tip requested on top of that. I could not believe this was happening in Japan. My Japanese companion was disgusted with all of this as well. We decided to check out after the first night, even if we had booked multiple nights, and they wanted 50% cancelation fee. I understand if we wanted to cancel for other reasons however we just did not want to endure the low level of service and quality offered by the establishment. After long conversation they explained how to use the onsen multiple times (no guarantee it will work as other people will do the same). Why was this not explained at check in? The onsen private rooms are small and there are no options for different types of temperature or water content I have seen in all other onsens I have visited. I was able to enter one of the rooms in the morning. There were broken tiles and mold in the shower area. Outside, nothing like staring at 3 brown walls, middle of few trees and listening to the morning traffic passing by while sitting in the hot water... This was the lowest experience I have ever...

Very charming resort with lovely rooms and good facilities. We loved the open air bath that you can book for 45 min for yourself. The room was spacious and clean and the place felt like a lovely place to spend a weekend surrounded by nature. The only reason for the low rating was the hotel restaurant, that was extremely disappointing. It was one of the top three most expensive meals of our entire Japan trip, yet the only really bad one. The staff was lovely and attentive, but the food was very poor. They claim to have this cool concept around fresh local vegetables, but the thing is that they don't manage to make good food out of them. The vegetables we got served were overcooked, watered out, with no taste whatsoever and no processing beyond simply being boild or thrown on a plate with some dressing or into a gelatine. The beef was also badly cooked, and the wine by the glass was low quality. The bread tasted old and dry. Very sad to be giving such bad feedback, but we were really disappointed by the experiece and we felt absolutely tricked. This would have been forgivable for a 3000 yen meal but not for a...

Very charming resort with lovely rooms and good facilities. We loved the open air bath that you can book for 45 min for yourself. The room was spacious and clean and the place felt like a lovely place to spend a weekend surrounded by nature. The only reason for the low rating was the hotel restaurant, that was extremely disappointing. It was one of the top three most expensive meals of our entire Japan trip, yet the only really bad one. The staff was lovely and attentive, but the food was very poor. They claim to have this cool concept around fresh local vegetables, but the thing is that they don't manage to make good food out of them. The vegetables we got served were overcooked, watered out, with no taste whatsoever and no processing beyond simply being boild or thrown on a plate with some dressing or into a gelatine. The beef was also badly cooked, and the wine by the glass was low quality. The bread tasted old and dry. Very sad to be giving such bad feedback, but we were really disappointed by the experiece and we felt absolutely tricked. This would have been forgivable for a 3000 yen meal but not for a...