Ryokan. Akihiko Seki

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      Contents

The Japanese Ryokan: A Timeless Retreat 8
Ryokan and Onsen Etiquette: Essential Knowledge 14
Around Tokyo GORA KADAN Hakone, Kanagawa 20
SENKYORO Hakone, Kanagawa 24
TSUBAKI Yugawara, Kanagawa 28
ATAMI SEKITEI Atami, Izu Peninsula 32
KONA BESSO Izu-Nagaoka, Izu Peninsula 36
YAGYU-NO-SHO Shuzenji, Izu Peninsula 40
SEIRYUSO Shimoda, Izu Peninsula 44
SENJYUAN Minakami, Gunma 48
NARAYA Kusatsu, Gunma 54
BANKYU RYOKAN Yunishigawa, Tochigi 58
SANRAKU Nasu, Tochigi 62
HOSHINOYA KARUIZAWA Karuizawa, Nagano 66
TOKIWA HOTEL Kofu, Yamanashi 70
Kyoto, Nara and Kansai HIIRAGIYA Kyoto 74
SEIKORO INN Kyoto 78
SUISEN Kameoka, Kyoto 82
KIKUSUIRO Nara 88
TOSEN GOSHOBO Arima, Hyogo 92
NISHIMURAYA HONKAN Kinosaki, Hyogo 96
Central Japan RYUGON Minami-Uonuma, Niigata 102
YUMOTO CHOZA Kamitakara-mura 108
WANOSATO Miya-mura, Gifu 116
KAYOTEI INN Yamanaka, Ishikawa 122
ARAYA TOTOAN Yamashiro, Kaga 128
HOUSHI Awazu Onsen, Komatsu 132
HAZU GASSYO Yuya Onsen, Aichi 140
Northern Japan MUKAITAKI Higashiyama, Aizu-Wakamatsu 144
SARYO SOEN Akiu, Sendai 148
TSURU-NO-YU Tazawako, Akita 154
KURAMURE Otaru, Hokkaido 162
Southern Japan SEKITEI Ohno-cho, Hiroshima 168
YAMATOYA BESSO Dogo, Matsuyama 172
MURATA Yufuin, Oita 176
MIYAZAKI RYOKAN Unzen, Nagasaki 184
YUSAI Kurokawa Onsen, Kumamoto 190
GAJOEN Makizono, Kagoshima 198

      Sekitei, across from Miyajima, is a garden of peace overlooking Japan’s Inland Sea.

      THE JAPANESE RYOKAN: A TIMELESS RETREAT

      Edo elements remain alive at Tsuru-no-Yu in Akita, an inn popular with hikers, history buffs and bathers.

      Slip off your shoes and enter a world that is distinctly Japanese. Cherry blossoms. Zen. Foamy green tea. Warm water meditations one might call, simply, a bath. Hospitality of honor. Ritualized routines to quiet, to sooth the mind, the spirit.

      The philosophers, the potters, the tea masters and the poets of Japan, who, thousands of years ago halted the elaborate evolutions of beauty in all its sumptuous gold-leaf manifestations, have attracted generations of humbled aesthetics. Van Gogh, Picasso and Frank Lloyd Wright are among the many painters, architects and creative iconoclasts who have looked to Japan for inspiration. Free spirits have marveled at Japan’s studied serenity and heightened awareness of the beauty of a single blade of grass, a single flower petal, a single wave, a single volcanic mountain. They have studied wood, earth and stones, lines, planes and space and man’s daily interaction with the impermanence of nature.

      A Japanese Zen monk once described absolute beauty as “pure white snow in a silver dish.” This crystalline perception of beauty, the distilled, asymmetrical, modest interpretations of Japanese art and architecture that now are emulated around the world are no longer easy to find in Japan. A 21st century traveler to Tokyo must visually edit telephone wires, construction cranes, a wealth of concrete box buildings, concrete mountain faces, neon, plastic and florid representations of nature in ersatz form.

      The good news is that even the Japanese have begun to look for spaces that are authentic, organic, human, historic, refined and natural. There are classic inns throughout Japan that have maintained and refreshed their thatched roofs, their bold wood beams, their fragrant tatami floors. And there are innkeepers, who, thankfully, have saved farmhouses, samurai and lordly residences, sometimes moving them and adapting them to accommodate modern-day guests. There are also recently built inns that are prize-winning in design, progressive in their reverence for the use of natural materials, old-world traditional in their concern for showing foreign visitors the unique rituals of a night spent at a Japanese inn.

      It long has been lamented that Japan is still backward in opening doors and receiving foreign guests in a way that does not offend host and guest alike. That too is changing. The rigid formality, the inability to communicate in any language other than Japanese and the abstruse dance of shoes and slippers and bowing and bathing costumes are no longer the norm in Japan. At last, self-conscious Japan recognizes that the international community treasures all that is special

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