Hotel Sanrakuso — Hotel in Shirahama

My husband and I spent one night in Hotel Sanrakuso during our stay in Shirahama in early August. I must say this is one of the best onsen hotel experience we have ever been had!! Highly recommended!!||||Hotel: Thr hotel is located right in front of the Shirahama Beach. Public buses are run by Meiko, and you can take bus No. 12 at the Shirahama Station and get off station No. 16 which is right outside the hotel. Bus travelling time is about 15 minutes. Meiko have other buses running to various tourist attractions in Shirahama. So don't forget to get a bus schedule at the Shirahama Station. Alternatively, the hotel also offer free shuttle services running to and from Shirahama Station. Schedules didn't match ours so we chose to travel by public bus. Reservation is required for hotel free shuttle service.||||Hotel check-in time is 15:00, but you can drop your luggages at the reception if you arrive early, and they will simply take them to your room direct. Staff will also ask you to do pre-registation, so that when you come back at/after 15:00, they can take you to your room immediately. Alternatively, one can ask Shirahama Station staff to take your luggages to the hotel (around 200yen per luggage).||||There are 9 floors in total. The public onsen (2 types) and souvenir shop are on 2/F; restaurant is on 5/F. Rooms with in-room onsen are located on 8/F and 9/F. Check-out time is 10am.||||As Shirahama Beach is located right in front of the hotel, many hotel guests enjoy swimming and having a nice walk on the beach during the day. You can also play fireworks on the beach at night (before 23:00)!! Don't forget to ask staff for a lighter and a small bucket of water before you go!||||Room: We chose a Japanese style room on the 9/F with in-room onsen. Deco is a bit dated but in good fit. Everything is very clean without dust. Otari is our housekeeper and she did a very good job in showing the room facilities to us in great details and in English (we do not speak Japanese). Nice green tea and snacks were also offered upon our arrival. The room is very spacious and equipped with various necessities, including mini fridge, kettle, mini safe, free wifi, hair dryer, comb, face mask and lotion, shower cap, cotton pad and cotton rods, etc.. The in-room onsen was well setup when we arrived. Onsen running from tap is 70 degrees. They did a good job in adjusting it to around 40 degrees for guests to enjoy right upon arrival.||||The onsen tub is very big and located on the balcony, where you can enjoy the sea/beach view while relaxing. You can open the windows on the balcony to enjoy the summer breeze as well.||||The shampoo, conditioner and shower gel all smell very good. They use plums grown in Shirahama in making them. What a wonderful experience for guests to try out Shirahama products!||||Yukata are offered in the room (3 sizes). The hotel also offers many colourful yukata for female guests to wear during they stay (if one doesn't like plain ones in the room).||||The hotel staff will help setup beddings on the tatami floor in the room right after dinner. Sound-proofing is also good in the room and basically we didn't hear any noise from corridor/other rooms/street. We had a very sound sleep at night. Beddings and pillows are very comfortable.||||Meal: Otari served kaiseki dinner in our room. The food was very delicious. It was a very enjoyable meal. Breakfast was served in the restaurant on 5/F. There were lots of food served in buffet style, including Japanese traditional dishes and western dishes.||||All in all, this is a very good hotel in terms of facilities, in-room onsen, meal and view. There are lots of sight-seeing spots in Shirahama which are easier accessible by public buses (The Tore-tore market is a must-go where one can enjoy BBQ fresh seafood!!). It was a very enjoyable and wonderful stay for us, and we will definitely come back in the near future. Highly...

Location/Transportation:|Even though it's not a 5-star hotel, it is the closest to the Shirahama beach i.e. just 100m behind the beach and the best centralized view of the entire bay. From the Shirahama train station, we took a cab so that we didn't have to lug our suitcases up the hotel's slope. From the hotel, we could easily walk to the beach, the Sandebeki cliffs/cave nearby and also the town a couple hundred of meters away to check out the small restaurants and big Gourmet City 24-hour supermarket.|||Highlights we'd enjoyed:||- Some rooms (especially xx05 and xx06) have onsens in the room, and directly faces the beach and the T-shaped sand spit, letting us enjoy an awesome view while soaking in the onsen in the comfort of our room. Room was large and having all amenities for onsen e.g. yukatas, facial products, ReFa hairstyling products, etc.||- Free borrowing of pretty kimonos for adults and kids on each floor's lift lobby.||- Free drinks station (7-10am and 3-10pm) allowing guests to get free coffee, tea, ice, plain water in between (hotel's shared) onsen soaks on the 3rd floor. Also available at the same area are: a mini soft playground, VR machine and a futsbal table.||- Omakase dinner included in room price is served in a private dining room on L5. This level is apparently the best height to enjoy the sunset while enjoying dinner. Full-glass windows meant it was great for taking family photos with the sunset.||- Breakfast buffet had a sumptuous variety and was served in a dining hall with individual, private seating booths.||- Love the hotel's shop too as we were able to get some beach essentials (good quality swimming goggles, better than those at the convenient mart), some cute panda-themed local souvenirs (because Shirahama used to be a famous panda town for years until the pands were returned to China just a few months ago), and other local products such as plum (Ume) products. Prices were fair and good.||- Almost all staff were extremely cheerful and polite, showing us the map and recommending us places to have lunch while our room was being prepared. They also wear Hawaiian-themed staff shirt probably to give off Wakiki beach vibes.|||What could be improved:||- Perhaps they could also have English on the labels of products in the hotel lobby, thereby encouraging tourists to buy more when they know what the products are.||- It would be much better if the private dinner's serving staff could hang around. We searched high and low, using the private room's service phone, even looked in the dining hall, just for someone to help us take a family photo with the beautiful sunset. They all refrained from talking to us (Jap style of doing things - they will avoid interaction especially with foreigners if they are not the main service staff). Alas, the beautiful sunset was gone by the time our designated private dining service staff returned with the rice dish. A little disappointing how...

Stayed one night at this hotel and chose a seaview Japanese style room with abalone and lobster for dinner served inside my room. ||View from the room on the 6/F was beautiful overlooking the nice beach and the sea. However the room itself had very strong smell of cigarettes. I was aware I had booked a room which allowed smoking because none of the non-smoking rooms was available at the time of booking. But the smell was really hard to bear. The smell even stained into my sleeping shirt. Cleanliness was ok though. ||For the food, dinner was really disappointing. I had stayed in many different onsen hotels in different parts of Japan and regrettably I must say the food quality of this particular dinner was not worth the money I was charged for. Food was generally not as fresh as expected, particularly the sashimi. The lobster was cooked like 30 minutes before being served. Abalone was being kept warm so it was alright. Food quality was at the lower end of what I had experienced while staying at most other onsen hotels, even those which charged much less! For breakfast it was buffet served on the 5/F and was of average standard. ||I was able to use both onsen on 2/F as they switched for alternate use by male and female guests. Guests need to be aware that for both onsen, they need to go down an indoor staircase after getting changed and put their stuff inside the lockers before reaching the bathing area. This could be challenging for some since my wife witnessed several senior ladies who had turned back upon realising it. I would also hope that the hotel consider constructing an open air bath to make it more appealing for guests to enjoy. ||Overall comment is that I would pick another hotel to stay at if I visit Shirahama again. I did not have many choices this time because my visit was only planned 3...