Nishimuraya Honkan — Hotel in Toyooka

Nishimuraya Honkan is a very expensive ryokan at Kinosaki onsen town, especially during Matsuba crab season, but it is worth it for the superb environment, service and food. ||I arrived on an early train from Osaka around 1 pm, was escorted to the coffee lounge to complete check in procedures and told I could return at 2 pm and be shown to my room and provided with my onsen pass to visit all 7 public onsen baths of Kinosaki onsen. It is well worth it to arrive early before check in time for the ryokans and to take a later train out on your departure day. Early arrival will allow you to hike or take the ropeway up to Onsenji temple and follow the tradition of praying to the onsen guardian for a blessing before taking to the waters of Kinosaki onsen. Late departure will allow you to make full use of the onsen pass that is included in the price of most ryokans as the pass is valid from 3 pm to 3 pm of the next day. Generally busy times at the public baths are 3 pm to dinner time, then after dinner to closing at 11 pm and then early morning on opening until normal check out time for ryokans of 11 am, so late morning and early afternoon are usually quiet times at the public baths, handy for those who are trying to complete the onsen circuit of all 7 public baths in Kinosaki onsen during their one day stay. ||I was assigned a garden view room on the ground floor and had a fabulous view of the courtyard garden. It is well designed so that I never see other rooms eventhough many are arranged around the courtyard garden. Everything in Nishimuraya Honkan is beautiful, well maintained and serenely tasteful. ||My room was quite large with a large combined sleeping and sitting tatami mat area with a low table for the in room dinner service, which is then pushed to the side when staff set out the futon bedding after dinner. There is also a separate sitting area by the window that has more Western style chairs that are more comfortable to sit on than the traditional flat to the ground Japanese chairs. There is a bathroom by the entry foyer with a sink and a separate bathroom with a tub and hand shower. The toilet though is off in another part of the room by the sitting area by the window. I found the room very comfortable and slept very well on the futon bedding. ||Nishimuraya has two public boths that are alternated between men and women with the larger bath reserved for men during the afternoon and evening and the smaller bath reserved for men in the morning, and vice versa for women. Each bath has a larger indoor pool and a smaller outdoor pool. It was rarely occupied by more than one other person when I visited the baths during my two night stay as the 7 public baths are the much bigger attraction, being generally larger, more diverse in setting and much nicer in many cases. Most visitors seem to focus on the public baths and completing the pilgrimage to all 7 and stamping their special souvenir map with the unique stamps of each of the 7 public baths (the stamps and ink pads are located just outside or just inside the entrance of each public bath). Because of this, you will frequently find people having quite short visits to a public bath - go in, undress, wash clean, go in the bath for 5 or 10 minutes and then leave. Especially in the evening after dinner until closing at 11 pm, the public baths will reach their peak occupancy level. The Visit Kinosaki website is very helpful as it has a live bath house crowd status page that shows the percentage of occupied capacity at each of the 7 public baths. In the evening after dinner, a couple of the most popular baths are often at more than 100% capacity. ||A highlight of a ryokan stay is of course the food. I was at Nishimuraya during Matsuba crab season and so had the Matsuba crab course dinner for my first evening. The meal is served in my room in a series of courses and took about 2 hours to complete (partly as I was eating crab for a couple of courses and it took a long time to eat the meat from each crab leg and the body). Each course was beautifully presented and delicious, and the Matsuba crab truly deserves its reputation as the finest of crab with great texture and fresh sweetness. Through the course of my stay, I had boiled, hotpot, steamed and sashimi Matsuba crab. My server advised me that the second night dinner would normally be blowfish (ie. the famous poisonous pufferfish or fugu). I indicated I did not want to have blowfish so she arranged to switch it to more Matsuba crab again for the second night. Nevertheless, the second night dinner still included one blowfish dish as the chef's fish selection that night was fried blowfish. ||Breakfast at Nishimuraya was equally impressive. For my two days, I opted for one Western and one Japanese breakfast. Both had lots of food and were delicious. In the Japanese breakfast, there is some guest participation involved in that you are asked to make your own miso soup with the provided ingredients and instructions. In the Western breakfast, in addition to your selected egg dish main course, there was fruit, starter salad, yogurt, mushroom soup and an assortment of excellent breads. ||I enjoyed my two night stay at Nishimuraya and would highly recommend it as a luxury stay in Kinosaki onsen. I also enjoyed the onsen town itself tremendously. It is large enough to have a range of things to do and a number of places to eat at for lunch or dinner (for those staying at a ryokan without dinner included), and the 7 public baths are wonderfully different and many were worth a second or...

To preface this review, a friend of mine highly recommended this hotel, so we decided to give it a try. For us, it was absolutely not worth the price tag and we would not recommend. That said, clearly, experience may differ as it was my friend’s best experience in Japan and one of the most disappointing for us.

The good: The internal garden is very well maintained and cute. Our Room faced the garden which we enjoyed, the sight was relaxing and pretty

The bad: For us, the food was the biggest deception. Sure there is a lot of food, but it’s mid. The presentations are cute, but all the dishes taste almost the same, and more importantly, the quality of the ingredients is disappointing. You can easily find higher quality food in a train station, and I’m not even exaggerating. For the price, this is unacceptable The room was old, but not in a nice way. It could use some love. It does look traditional, but it does not feel premium

Mixed: The service was, let’s say, interesting. They clearly try and put a lot of effort in providing the best service they can, which we appreciated, but I must admit, it felt a bit fake and cold, which made it awkward. It feels like they are all performing in a theatre, following a tight script. Some people will definitely enjoy this, but in our case we would have preferred more authenticity and a warmer touch The Onsens in the area are okay, very touristy, but again, this is something you either like or don’t. But they are not particularly wow

Overall, I would definitely not recommend this hotel, especially not at this price range. I would say between 30 and 40k jpy would be a more appropriate price for the experience, but even at that price I...

I thought we'd been to some nice ryokan but Nishimuraya Honkan brought it to another level. The building was recently renovated in summer 2024 so the interior is refreshed but still has a nice old school feel. There is a lot of staff and a number of them speak English. We had a tatami-only room which was quite large and a very large bathroom. The bathtub was constantly running hot water and it was so nice bathing and watching the snow fall. The meals were excellent, flavors not too strong and a great variety of high quality ingredients, fortunate enough to visit during Matsuba crab season and it didn't disappoint. The okami came by our room to say hello at dinner and she is very personable and was always around the guest areas. Location is super easy to walk around town. They provide rain boots for messy weather which was really convenient. The futon setup was very comfortable, however the manufacturer Maruhachi (maruhati) does not deliver outside of Japan. They offer full-service car park. The onsen aren't super fancy but the baths are nice and hot. We didn't visit the other onsens in town cause I'm guessing they'd be crowded. There are a gazillion stairways and winding hallways, can take some time to navigate. I think they're like that to confuse intruders haha. Nice and peaceful at night, slept well but our neighbors were very chatty people and we could hear thru the walls. The Guerlain bathroom amenities are a little strong-smelling for my taste. Overall a very good and enjoyable stay that will be memorable...