Minshuku Chikatsuyu — Hotel in Tanabe

our second night's stay on the kumano kudo self guided hike. the address for this spot is listed as tanabe, although the settlement is chikatsuyu. as it had been a long 4 hour + hike we didn't explore the area. had read there was a public foot bath across the bridge before we arrived at our inn, we searched and found it and that was heaven. ordered 2 beer and sat in the sunshine and shade and soaked our hard working feet. pope we had met along the trail joined us and all was good. so we arrived in a good frame of mind at our small 8-10 room inn. greeted warmly. shoes off, slippers on. shown to our room. washrooms in the hallway, men's and women's. as we were wiped we unfolded our bedding and had a nap before we used the onsen, which is located in a separate building, steps away from the inn, along a river. peaceful setting. separate areas for each gender. enter the locker area. next into the onsen area. sit on the bench and wash. then into the wonderful hot water. of course i don't get all the steps correct, i'll learn yet! didn't feel like wearing our kimonos for dinner and we were the only ones who didn't. had a set time and there are 2 dining rooms. traditional low tables, 12 at our table. many varieties of dishes served for our meal. retired to our room after for a quiet evening. could hear the voices but all low and laughs, nice to hear. all peaceful. didn't have the best sleep as the futons a bit thin. good breakfast. all clean and spotless and well run. a warm...

I stayed one night here in June 2019. The great experience started on the phone call I made to reserve a room. I had tried to reserve for one person through Kumano Travel, the local portal for walkers on the Kumano Kodo. However, on Kumano Travel I could not book for one person--though I could do so for two--so I called the Minshuku and tried directly.||||Mr. Kinoshita, the owner, booked a room for me. A few weeks later I arrived for my stay after walking a very tough 13 km from Takijiri-oji. The last 9 km were through heavy rain on a slippery trail. I received a very hearty and warm welcome from all the Kinoshita family--the Minshuku is run by two generations of this family. The room was spotlessly clean. After a nice bath, I had a wonderful and delicious meal of local Wakayama food. Everything was delicious and I ate it in a room overlooking the beautiful river that runs by the Minshuku and in the distance the mountains of Wakayama. I couldn't eat all the food for dinner, so my hosts kindly wrapped up the rice for the next day's lunch.||||This place is quiet so I slept well on a comfortable futon. The next morning I had another excellent meal for breakfast and headed on my way for another day of hiking with friendly goodbyes from my excellent hosts.||||Overall, great place. Rooms are simple. Spotlessly clean. Great food and drinks (I had a good bottle of wine at dinner for a very reasonable price). Lovely hosts. Highly...

We stayed at the guest house after the first 14k leg of our Kumano Kodo journey, and we cannot recommend it enough!

As we had only stayed in western-style 3-4 star hotels during our trip, this stay was the first experience we would have with a traditional Japanese guest house..and to be honest, we were not comfortable with the situation. As a result we had bought enough supplies to last the night as we were adamant that we would go to bed hungry that night and we’re sure that this would be a necessary evil to walk the trail.

However, we could not have been more wrong. This guest house is nothing short of amazing, and the host (the son of the owner) is by far the kindest person we have meet during our 3 week trip to Japan.

The rooms are large and clean, the guesthouse is located almost on the lake (allowing for a fantastic scenery), the 2x onsens are clean and big, the staff in general is kind and caring and last but not least the food has to be mentioned, as both dinner and breakfast was by far the best meal we had during our entire trip.

This place deserves 6 stars. Go there for the best introduction of how good Japanese style “hotels” can be. We will...