style="font-size:15px;"> Step inside and you will be met by staff dressed in black rather than in kimono. In place of green tea comes a welcome glass of sparkling wine served in a cavernous lobby, with natural wood flooring and furnishings and floor-to-ceiling windows that give panoramic views of greenery.
From the lobby, a corridor of bamboo leads to the guest rooms, which are spread over four floors and all overlook the river. Floors one to three have twenty-three Japanese-style rooms that feature low sofas and beds and offer an open space that combines a tatami-matted sitting area and wood-floored bedroom, plus wide windows for taking in the sights and sounds of nature outside. On the fourth floor are eight Western-style rooms, with carpeting and contemporary, unfussy interiors.
Balancing out the hearty flavor of the Meiji nabe (above), the meals also include the finesse of intricate dishes like these. Striking to look at yet sublime on the palette.
However, if you want a room that says Hakone like no other, book the KAI’s Yosegi-no-Ma, which has been decorated using a distinctive local craft called yosegi marquetry, a type of woodworking that uses different colors and tones of wood to give a mosaic-like appearance. In Hakone’s souvenir stores, you see everything from yosegi boxes and trays to cups and cupboards, and the Yosegi-no-Ma room has gone all out to incorporate these and yosegi-patterned furnishings in its design to very striking effect. Taking the theme a step further, every night in the lobby guests can make their own yosegi coasters; a fun activity and resulting in a souvenir that will be a real conversation-starter.
Like the Yosegi-no-Ma room, dinner is an elaborate affair. The ten-course kaiseki might start with an appetizer like salmon roe with sea urchin, before the hassun plate of delicacies, which, depending on the season, could include morsels such as steamed chicken with butterbur sprout miso, sea urchin mixed with agar, or thinly sliced potato dressed in flying fish roe. A standout dish here is the chef ’s special Meiji gyu no nabe hot pot, which features succulent chunks of steak cooked in a miso-based sauce.
One of the KAI Hakone’s signatures—a nabe (which roughly translates as a hot pot) of high-grade beef cooked in a miso-based sauce.
Hakone is renowned in Japan for its abundance of natural hot springs—there are twenty in the area, and bathing is a key part of any ryokan stay here. Drawing on water from the Hakone Yumoto hot spring, the KAI’s two semi open-air communal baths (one for men, one for women) feature large “infinity” bathtubs with vast open windows that frame the lush riverside scenery.
Hakone is also renowned as one of the most popular weekend retreats from Tokyo, in part because of its ryokan and baths, but also because it’s a fun area to explore. Using Hakone-Yumoto Station as a starting point, and going through a succession of different forms of transportation (from switchback railway to cable car and ropeway), guests at the KAI can easily head up into the mountains to see sights like the Hakone Open Air Museum, the historic Fujiya Hotel (see page 32), the mountain village of Gora, the steaming volcanic valley of Owakudani, and then drop down to the picturesque Lake Ashi—a route that also offers up various glimpses of Mount Fuji.
Hoshino Resorts kAi Hakone 界 箱根
Address: 230 Yumoto-chaya, Hakonemachi, Ashigarashimo, kanagawa 250-0312
Telephone: 050-3786-1144
Website: www.hoshinoresorts.com/en/resortsandhotels/kai/hakone
Email: [email protected]
number of rooms: 32
Room rate: ¥¥
The communal baths are semi open-air and ion-rich, with a gentle coolness coming from the woods and the river that runs alongside the KAI. The way the opening in the building frames nature is a classic concept, albeit on a grand scale here.
if you are in the Yosegi-no-Ma room, which is designed on yosegi marquetry themes (a Hakone craft), while enjoying the striking woodwork.
There’s always something special about a little sake at a ryokan. You could take it with natural views on one of the terraces.
KIKKASO INN HAKONE
With just three rooms, a night at the Kikkaso is both intimate and tranquil. It’s a rare opportunity to have a former Imperial villa almost all to oneself, picturesque garden included.
History. The Fujiya Hotel in Hakone, one of Japan’s classic Western-style hotels, is steeped in it. Since opening in 1878, it has functioned as a luxury retreat for royalty and the stars, from Japan’s own Imperial Family to the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Helen Keller, and John Lennon. Explore the buildings and grounds and the past immerses you. Old photographs of famous guests adorn many of the hallway walls, there are art deco interiors, aging woods, and stairs that creak as you climb them. But that's not all. The Fujiya contains one of Hakone’s best kept secrets, the Kikkaso Inn.
Built in 1895 as a summer villa for the Emperor and Empress Meiji, and used by various members of the Imperial Family into the 1940s (when the Fujiya took control of it), the Kikkaso oozes old charm. Visit the tatami-mat dining area, where you can take a multi-dish kaiseki dinner if you don’t opt for the highly rated French cuisine at the Fujiya, and you’ll be eating in what was once the Emperor’s bedroom. Look at the pillars of Japanese cypress here and you will still see some of the iron rings that would have held up the Imperial mosquito nets, as well as iron light fittings bearing the Imperial chrysanthemum crest.
It’s the staff that ultimately make a good ryokan stay. The concept of omotenashi—roughly meaning hospitality but with a deeper nuance of understanding and anticipating a guest’s needs—is sometimes over-hyped nowadays and when done badly lacks flexibility, but at the best ryokan, it’s the key to the experience. Generations of service means places like the Kikkaso get omotenashi just right every time.
The Imperial adventure continues outside, where Kikkaso guests have exclusive access to the Imperial Family’s once-private stroll garden. Like the Kikkaso, which is the smallest of the former Imperial villas in Japan, the garden is an intimate affair, with a mossy pathway leading up to a small “hill” that has a view over the villa, and where a carp-filled pond is accented by a vivid vermilion bridge. Like the Meiji and Showa emperors before them, it’s very likely guests will enjoy their stroll in complete peace and quiet—there are, after all, only three guest rooms at the Kikkaso, all following the classic ryokan formula of tatami flooring, paper screen doors and, at night, futon arranged on the floor for sleeping.
If the historic charm of the Kikkaso and the glamorous atmosphere of the Fujiya Hotel were not enough, the surrounding location also has much to
