Kirishima Kanko Hotel — Hotel in Kirishima

We stayed for one night in a modern Japanese room with a private bath. Tattoos are not allowed in the public onsen. The room was comfortable and there was tea and hot water for us to use, along with a couple of welcome snacks. We did not choose a room with a view so our room actually looked out onto a dog park but this didn't really bother us. We had the shabu shabu kaiseki for dinner. I do not eat meat so they substituted fish and prawn for some of the courses, which I requested in advance. It was very tasty. The person serving us was very attentive and nice to chat to. Unfortunately we missed breakfast so I cannot comment on how that was. I noticed that at least one review comments on the smell - this is the sulfur in the hot spring water and is to be expected in a spa town! I couldn't smell it inside our room.

The only major downside is that this hotel is split across multiple buildings and there is no step free access between the buildings, so this may be an issue if your room is not in the main building. Access between buildings is all inside though, you don't need to go outside to get between them. We were in the south building so there was one flight of stairs but the staff helped us with our bags. There was a small lift in the south building to get to our room.

I would recommend this for a traditional experience but bear in mind it is a little bit in the middle of nowhere. We were able to get the Kagoshima airport bus but it is not super frequent so make sure...

We stayed in the town of Maruo for a total of 4 nights with the first two spent in a luxurious and secluded ryokan called Komatsu (please see my other review) where we were being pampered every second we were there. With 2 full days of hiking during our last 2 days planned, we did not expect to stay in our room for long hours and booked Kanko instead for its cheaper price (and to rest our stomach from the feasts in Komatsu). Our expectations of the hotel were adjusted accordingly. The hotel is fairly old today but I could imagine it had seen its glorious days when even the crowned prince had once visited. Don't expect any personal service except a doorman/car park attendant(?) to greet you at the front door. There are different kinds of onsen some of which you could book for private use. The public bath at the top of the hotel is typical and it includes also this very typical mountain view through a fogged up big glass windows (I wonder when they can start designing some better windows!) If you are here due to its lower priced rooms, why not go all the way by looking up a few websites and compare (I used booking and japanican). In my case, I found that booking 2 singles were actually cheaper than booking a double and decided to go...

We really enjoyed our stay and the food was great. However a couple of issues lost them a star and you need to know these things if you do not speak Japanese. First, for a large hotel it is surprising that only one person speaks any English at all. This is ok until a problem arises. Second we decided to try the hotel bar one evening. They seem to have almost nothing on offer other than the local shochu, a whisky tasting spirit. So we had a couple of small glasses. When we came to check out we found that we had been charged over 4800 Yen for those two small drinks that we did not enjoy. This was an ‘All you can drink’ price we were told. Something that was not made clear to us by the bar. Because of the language problems and the fact that we had signed the order we just had to pay up. But it was a sad ending to an otherwise...