Hotel Towadaso — Hotel in Towada

I booked it through an Early Bird sale so it's GREAT VALUE for my one night of stay including breakfast (buffet) and dinner (Japanese set meal with sashimi, sushis, various appetizers and hot pot) and unlimited access to the public bath / open-air onsen (一泊二食). Of course for an extra price, you get a better room view and/or meal.

Overall clean interior for the room and hotel. I think the main appeal for this hotel are: (1) location (close to attractions of the lake and Oirase areas) (2) history (you can't complain about the old interior because it's pretty much the same case for most hotels/ryokans around this lake. To be fair, I think it's maintained in an acceptable shape given the age (built in 1975-87)) - you felt like traveling through a time machine to ancient Japan when you're inside.

I guess it's also why it's a go-to choice for some tour groups I came across from Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Other positives: Staff were generally attentive and sincere. I could imagine many of them have been working here for a long time. Nice presentation of breakfast and dinner The souvenir shop has more selection of items than the downtown shops with similar prices. Picturesque surrounding and exterior in autumn free wifi with acceptable coverage around the property free parking / seasonal free pick-up from stations

Potential areas in need of improvement: The open-air onsen was great surrounded by autumn leaves in November, but the interior of public bath got quite a bit of mould around the ceilings and walls. Even "non-smoking rooms" have some smell of smoke because basically all rooms allow smoking from what I see. Absence of vending machines of fresh milk (it should be prevalent for typical onsens/ryokans... so a bit weird. There's only a vending machine selling long-life UHT milk, so a bit disappointing) The dinner offered seasonal local ingredients which's great, but there's no written menus/descriptions. If you have food allergies/restrictions you'd better ask what you're eating (because not everything was obvious)

The experience reminded me of my recent stay in an onsen in Dōgo Onsen area (in Ehime) which's also really old, but with renovations within the last decade done to some parts to improve the guests' experience. I think Hotel Towadaso has similar potential given its location to attract tourists in autumn and winter. Its last major renovation was in 1991 (28 years ago), and I believe it's probably time for...

We spent a couple of nights at the Hotel Towadaso on our latest trip to Japan and found it to be a decent base for visiting the area. It is quite a big hotel and caters to the numerous bus tours that roll through the area, so it has a bit of a mass tourism feel to it which we didn’t like. The location is OK, just a 5-minute walk to the lake front, however not a very inspiring location. The hotel was clean and well-presented, weeds under control, but with an air of faded grandeur. The reception staff were all good, very helpful and spoke a little bit of English. Our Japanese style room was lovely, very large and airy, with plenty of areas for storage and room to spread out (but drastically lacking hooks to hang things on. Our futon bed was comfortable and we had a good night’s sleep. The room was clean and well-maintained. The walls however are a bit thin, so you are able to hear your neighbors engaged in conversation, and also a bit of noise from the hallway. There is a number of restaurants on site. The one we ate our dinners at wasn’t all that great. The food was quite bland and tasteless and not much that was even recognizable. Luckily we had some extra food with us to supplement with. The breakfast, on the other hand, was quite good, but you eat it in this massive industrial type cafeteria that is obviously geared up for the mass bus tours. Good food, zero ambience. The hotel wifi was intermittent, almost unusable in the evenings, so we just switched to 4G data. So overall, not a bad experience, but we’d probably look for something else if we were to stay in...

I thought maybe three stars for this hotel but on reflection gave it an extra one for its epic scale. This place is huge with hundreds of rooms, more wings than a dragonfly, a very large souvenir shop, an indoor waterfall that covers three floors in height, onsens with Doric columns, numerous restaurants and more. It is definitely what I term 'shabby chic' which is common in Japan in rural hotels (its heydey was sometime between the 60's and the 80's) but it has an indefinable charm. Pluses: you are unlikely to ever stay anywhere like it again so take the chance now, service is with the standard Japanese courtesy and efficiency, rooms are large and comfortable and very clean, Onsens are relaxing, particularly the smaller outside baths (if you beat the tour bus hordes). Minuses: we had prepaid dinners and opted for 7:30pm but found that the meals which included a lot of raw and cold seafood had been put out unrefrigerated for an unknown but probably long period (eat earlier, say 6:00pm as is usual in Japan); our room was adjacent to and above the bus parking area and at one stage there were 13 tour buses outside our windows loading in the morning and unloading in the evening (if you can speak Japanese ask to avoid this), breakfasts were served like a hospital meal (but were more tasty). In summary I have stayed in many better places but I couldn't tell you where they all were but I will always remember the Hotel...