Hisamatsu — Hotel in Shirakawa

Booked via Japan guesthouse website because a lot of other places had no online contact or were booked up. ||Stayed for 1 night with my husband. When we visited there were four other guests (two couples in each room). ||The room itself was quite basic without a lot of decoration. Like many traditional houses the walls were very thin, so there was not a lot of privacy between the rooms (unlike a good ryokan). The rooms are also quite tired (walls and doors particularly). ||Dinner was excellent and truly a highlight. We ate fish (mackerel?), tofu, different vegetable dishes, soba, Hida beef and vege, loads of rice and a whole pot of green tea. The quality was fantastic, one of our highlight meals in Japan. There was nothing too "weird" for tourist's tastebuds. Alcohol (beer, sake) was available at an additional cost. ||The owner didn't speak a lot of English but we could understand her well enough and if we needed anything she was on hand. ||The owner gave us discount tickets to the local onsen at Shirakawa-gō-no-yu (¥500 from ¥700) which we enjoyed. ||Announcements were made to say when dinner would be served (6pm), lights out (9pm, but they shut the gate at 9.30pm). I'm not sure how our fellow guests managed to sleep so early! In the morning we were woken up by soft dongs about 20 minutes after sunrise at 5.50am. As the house doesn't have any soundproofing, you'd be woken up by the sound of your breakfast being made anyway. Then the proper alarm went off about 6.50am for us to get up for breakfast at 7.30am.||We paid ¥8,952 per person plus tax. Although the food was excellent and the host was good, I think this is quite high compared to other traditional places we stayed in Japan; but it is standard for a traditional thatched roof house in Shirakawa-gō. If you are happy for a more modern facility, for example, Shirakawa-gō-no-yu is ¥10,000 per person and the building is of a much higher standard, plus the onsen facilities are included. I understand it is traditional, but personally I felt the experience was not worth the high price compared to other ryokans we stayed in Japan. If the price was lower, I'd be willing to overlook the tiredness of the building/room. ||I would also suggest that if you are already staying in a ryokan or minshuku, you don't need to stay overnight, and you can easily do a day trip with the tourist hoards (admittedly quite busy and we visited on a non-holiday...

This family-run inn is located a little further away from the others (if you take the main road that crosses the bridge over the river and continue through the main area with all the shops, it's the last house on the right at the top of the hill; you'll pass a small shrine on your left before you get there) - but that's not a bad thing at all. It is so peaceful here, especially once the tour buses clear out. We were given a very large room and you could slide the door and sit out on the "porch" and look out onto the mountains; at one point, we even saw a cream-coloured badger amble up to the side of the house and got to watch him a bit before shooing him away from the inn's little garden. Keep in mind that it is an older house, with shoji/paper screen walls (so light sleepers should be prepared and bring earplugs in case you get noisy/snoring neighbours in adjacent rooms). In spite of it being an older house, this inn had the most modern bathroom/toilet facilities of all of the inns we stayed in - they had many new stalls, so it was like they had their own public washroom; they are clearly prepared for a larger groups to stay with them. The meals were all delicious, and we enjoyed eating around the hearth, joined by other guests and the proprietors. Would definitely recommend this...

We stayed at Hisamatsu during our visit to Shirakawa-go. The place was really amazing - we had a great experience staying in the old farm house in this beautiful village. The host was friendly - she can speak little English but was helping us in every way. We arrived before check in time so we can drop off our luggage at the house and went for a walk in the village before check-in. On the departure day we also left our luggage at the house before our bus departing. It's one of the last houses in the village so it's not difficult to find - just look for a sign of the temple. We went to a view point by bus and walk down from there - not far to walk even with snow on the walkway. We stayed there in winter, and the house was warm with modern heaters around the house. They have a share Japanese bath inside the house with 3 modern style toilet stalls. There were another only 2 rooms staying at the same time with us so it's not really crowded. The host prepared dinner and breakfast for all of us and she made our beds while we had dinner. The room was quite warm with heater and the heating pad that put under the blanket. We will go back to stay there again if we...