Kyomachiya Ryokan Sakura Urushitei — Hotel in Kyoto

Beautiful hotel in Japanese style, located near the old town of Gion (roughly 15 mins walk). We took the Japanese Style room and were not disappointed. The futons were extremely comfortable and sleeping was a comfortable and great experience (if you prefer softer beds, they actually have soft mattress hidden inside the wardrobe which you can place under the futon). The room itself is designed beautifully too and has very good amenities. It is also very big for Japanese standards!

Great Sake tasting session (on Saturdays) during which we learned a lot about Japanese sake (and got to try it too!)

Hotel staff generally very friendly, welcoming and helpful (although sometimes they were not able to answer all our questions, for example they did not know about the discounted 'Haruka and ICOCA' airport train ticket so some additional training would be advisable). The staff is very international so if your English is not good, there is high chance they speak your language.

Thanks to Simon for all the tips and recommendations!

Area of the hotel is full of nice restaurants (within 15 mins walk) and there is a convenience shop 1 minute walk away. There are some bakeries and coffee shops but these tend to open quite late. The restaurants the hotel recommends are good and worth trying (we tried the Soba place which we knew already, and the tonkatsu restaurant). You can reach the main shopping street of Kyoto within 10 minutes' walk.

From the lowlights:

Wi-Fi was quite weak, my phone kept disconnecting in the room. We have not tried the Japanese breakfast, but the continental breakfast is quite poor. The main problem in my opinion is that most of the rooms are facing quite a busy road where the cars are passing by at a high speed. The traffic dies down during the night but returns again early morning. The windows are very soundproof but still if you are a light sleeper, an occasional truck passing by can wake you up. So I recommend bringing earplugs. These should do the work.

Overall I would recommend this hotel.

PS. I find it funny that some other reviewers think that the hotel uses deodorizer which smells like a pet shop. It is actually a smell of the bamboo mats in the room, which is part of the cultural experience you...

I booked here predominantly due to price as all hotels around Kyoto were quite expensive and I figured that since this was a ryokan it would be worthwhile.||The location is fairly central with regards to Kyoto but it's not extremely convenient to a whole lot. It's a fair distance to most attractions and even the ones that are relatively close such as the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine takes about half an hour with a transfer by metro. The closest metro station is about a 10 minute walk and there's not a whole lot to eat and do in the area.||The room we got was fairly small from my peception of a ryokan. There was a small wooden stool and table but it didn't really seem like the setup I expected. The room was lagging behind in maintenance and cleanliness: the screen door had a number of stains on it alongside as a section of the cloth covering the base of the walls. The wood that was used was chipped in a number of spots, especially on the edges of alcoves and storage areas. The futon was pretty thin for my liking although the pillows were fine. The door to the room also had an issue where you had to manually lock it instead of it doing so automatically.||The bathroom wasn't extremely small but it was pretty narrow. The vanity area was small and the toilet was positioned to where you were mere inches from the wall. The internet also had a significant problem with speed from my experience with it.||Breakfast needs to be ordered the previous day before 22:00 and consisted of a Japanese option, American option, Continental option, and Granola option. I thought the prices were reasonable and I got the Japanese options both times and thought it was reasonably well done. ||Service was a bit of a hit or miss, it wasn't necessarily that it was bad it was just inconsistent especially for the type of product that wished to be presented. It seemed a bit cold at times though it definitely varied by staff member.||I can't fault the place significantly since the hotel is significantly cheaper than pretty much most anything in the area (including competing ryokans) but the lack of upkeep and inconsistent service as well as elements of the experience make this far from the most authentic ryokan...

We were disappointed for this to be our worst stay in all of Japan.

This lodging overcharges for the aesthetics of a ryokan-style without any of the charm. They require guests to set up their own futons under the guise of "learning traditional living" when that is not a feature of any true Japanese ryokan. The private bath (regular water, non-onsen) is an additional charge as well, when I have never experienced that at any other lodging.

The worst part of the stay was the lack of coin laundry. The website vaguely advertises "laundry service" with an associated charge of 800 JPY. What they don't explain is that there is only one on-site washer/dryer that the staff will use for your clothes. The charge is actually 1200 JPY and could be more if they determine your laundry will require multiple loads. This is twice as much as a single run through a coin laundry. They kindly recommended a coin laundry down the way, but since most other guests also preferred this option we spent most of a night waiting to wash our clothes.

Specific to us, but our room (in the older annex building separate from the lobby area) had a door that was incredibly confusing to decipher in terms of locking. When we had raised this issue to staff, they explained that all doors in the annex have a specific locking mechanism (it will stay unlocked one time and then lock again? and there is no way to truly lock it from the inside), which would have been nice to know about when we had initially checked in. Also, our door was sandwiched between two other rooms such that we would nearly hit or be hit by our neighbors if anyone was trying to enter/exit at the same time.

We were so unhappy with our first night there that we decided to check out early and go to Himeji instead. When we had stated our reason for leaving to staff, they made no effort to inquire further about what we were unhappy about in order to improve their practices.

Other than not requesting our feedback, the staff were kind and polite. I only raise these complaints to discourage anyone from pursuing a stay here if they are truly in search of a traditional Japanese or ryokan experience. There are other cheaper and more authentic...