Ryokan Beniayu — Hotel in Nagahama

We stayed for one night at Beniayu in August 2012. It's a beautiful location on the northern end of Lake Biwa, and quite easy to get to: you get off the shinkansen at Maibara and take a 20 minute local train ride to Takatsuki Station, where the ryokan staff will pick you up in a van to drive you the few minutes to the inn, and take you back to the station in the morning after you check out. This made it very easy for us to spend a night at this ryokan while we were transitioning from Osaka to Tokyo during our trip.|| While the building is not "old," it's very nice inside and the rooms are large. Each room has an onsen (hot spring)-fed bath with a view over the lake. The service was great, and the food (we had the kaiseki B meal) was absolutely terrific; we were served a nine-course meal delivered with an English-language menu describing each course in detail, and each course was delicious. Dinner was served in our room, and breakfast the next morning (also delicious) was in a common room. Not all staff spoke English, but there was at least one English speaker present on staff at all times.|| While all ryokan that serve kaiseki meals of this quality are expensive, Beniayu was actually economical compared to other ryokan that we considered. We would go there again very happily and definitely recommend...

We stayed for one night at Beniayu in August 2012. It's a beautiful location on the northern end of Lake Biwa, and quite easy to get to: you get off the shinkansen at Maibara and take a 20 minute local train ride to Takatsuki Station, where the ryokan staff will pick you up in a van to drive you the few minutes to the inn, and take you back to the station in the morning after you check out. This made it very easy for us to spend a night at this ryokan while we were transitioning from Osaka to Tokyo during our trip.|| While the building is not "old," it's very nice inside and the rooms are large. Each room has an onsen (hot spring)-fed bath with a view over the lake. The service was great, and the food (we had the kaiseki B meal) was absolutely terrific; we were served a nine-course meal delivered with an English-language menu describing each course in detail, and each course was delicious. Dinner was served in our room, and breakfast the next morning (also delicious) was in a common room. Not all staff spoke English, but there was at least one English speaker present on staff at all times.|| While all ryokan that serve kaiseki meals of this quality are expensive, Beniayu was actually economical compared to other ryokan that we considered. We would go there again very happily and definitely recommend...

Nice view - the hotel is fronting the lake with no blockages so you can views the awesome sunsets every day from your room. You can also enjoy your hot spring while seeing the sunset. Hotel also provided telescope in your room and the lobby for guests to view birds and ducks. Good service - the front desk staff cleaned the luggages reel for us so it won’t dirty the carpet. They also carried the luggages to our room. We required an earlier check out (7.30) due to catching the earliest train back to Osaka, they offered to prepare breakfast at 7.00 for us and served us properly, we thought just something light. Nice room layout and Good food as well. Some staff can speak English so it is really easy to communicate. Strongly recommended. However it is worth noting that the car parks are located across the other side of the street, so you need to cross carefully and at night time it’s quick dark, so...