Ureshino Kanko Hotel Taishoya — Hotel in Ureshino

This is the most expensive hotel I've ever lived in at ~26666 yen/person/night, and I expect this to be the best experience I've had. It did not disappoint.

To celebrate the opening of the Ureshino Onsen Shinkansen Station, they offer a plan with limousine car transport to and from the station. We chose the limousine plan with the Saga Wagyu, the hotel's highest-grade food. When we arranged the limousine transport, they said they could not offer the limousine car and instead only have a usual small truck. This is before the free cancellation period, so I can still forgive this difference. When the day comes, we still get a limousine car, which is quite good. After check-in, the staff helped take all our belongings to the rooms and explained the facilities on the way. The staff does not speak much English at all, luckily we know some Japanese, so we can communicate. If you do not know Japanese, you might need a good and fast transition app.

Room We booked an 8-tatami room with a wooden bathtub with onsen water. 1 tatami is the size of a single bed (3x6ft). This is alright for my group of 3. The room has 4 bedding sets, and that would feel slightly cramped. There is also a larger room with an onsen bath and a few smaller rooms without an onsen bath. Rooms with onsen bath are in "bessou", meaning annexe. It features a beautiful garden with flowing water. My group is lucky with a room on the ground floor to walk around the garden and listen to the water flow.

Food In traditional ryokans like this, they will make your bed and push the large table to the side at dinner. During breakfast, they pack your bedding into the closet and move the table back to the centre. They only clean up the room during breakfast. They also give toothbrushes daily, which is silly (I got 9 at check out, and none of them was used!). The food was the most significant selling point, and it was incredible. A traditional Japanese Kaiseki meal with a wide variety and tasty ingredients. They are also beautifully plated (some with Arita yaki, a locally made porcelain, I suspect). The pictures will do a better job of describing them. The saga beef was outstanding and worth the extra cost, but I feel guilty eating it due to how good it was and how oily it was. The quantity is sometimes too much in dinners.

Onsen The bathtub in the room does not feel clean, as the edges are turning black. Also, the water from the onsen is 95C, so we have to mix it with cold water, and it feels noticeably less pure than in the public bath. They also offer free buses every 30 minutes to another hotel of the group in the evening. The public bath there is called Shiibanoyu. It is open air and has good views but is full of dead insects. It also feels less pure than the hotel's public bath, so I would not recommend it. The best bath is their own public bath. It is somewhat old, with the floor turning black, and the stone floor has many sharp edges. But the bath was clean and large, so I still enjoyed my time there. There is another public in the hotel, but it is under Construction, so I did not...

We took a highspeed bus from Fukuoka airport here - which took us around 1.5 hour. The staff from the hotel picked us up from the bus station directly and drove us to the hotel directly. The hotel was authentic - even it looked aged but everything was nicely preserved and maintained. The room was huge with a nice view (be prepared to navigate around the hotel - it looked bigger than it seemed to be). The onsen was brilliant - nice quality of water. They had another onsen away from the hotel - which they offered shuttle bus to-and-from that onsen every hour - that onsen was located in the middle of the forest which was stunning. The dinner and breakfast were the traditional Japanese meals - the staff would deliver all the food to your desk with their own pace. The food was nice - not the best Japanese food that I have ever had but nice enough for this price. The special tofo pot in the morning was a must-eat for everyone - very delicate tofo with nice flavours. This hotel was also quite remote from everything so we didn’t see a lot...

This hotel must own a ton of properties in the area. I've seen at least 3~4 hotels with their name on them. The hot springs were awesome, well facilitated with all the necessities. My GF and I stayed at a room called "tokubetsu shitsu," which means "Special Room" literally translated. The room was huge, but somewhat outdated. It reminded of a room from Showa era. Perhaps that is why the place is called "Taishoya." ||||The facility provides a shuttle bus to another hot springs area up in the mountains in the afternoon and morning hours. It's well worth a visit. The food was good, but not great. The dinner was a bit too much for two people to manage to finish. The breakfast was just about perfect in terms of volume. If you're visiting this area for one of the three well-known hot springs in Japan for beauty, I would recommend to stay at...