료칸 여명 旅館 黎明 Ryokan Reimei

If I could give this hotel zero stars, I would. This was by far the worst hotel experience I have had in all my years of travelling in Japan. The shower either had no water at all or only ice-cold water, and the water completely cut off while I was washing my hair. The room smelled disgusting and was clearly not cleaned properly. There was hair on the bed, the bathroom was dirty, the wallpaper was peeling, and the sink did not work properly. There were insects in the room, including a cockroach right next to the bed. The service was terrible from start to finish. There was no welcoming atmosphere whatsoever, and the staff did not offer any assistance with luggage despite the many stairs. The front desk was also not English-friendly. Communication was difficult, and we were spoken to in Chinese despite not requesting it. Overall, there was completely no customer service. The food was awful—dry, cold, and very disappointing. Not filling either. The family bath had clearly not been cleaned properly, as there was a used Band-Aid left behind by a previous guest, which was absolutely disgusting. The hot spring itself was dirty, had algae in it, and was not even hot. It certainly did not feel like a proper hot spring experience. The door to the room was extremely difficult to open, and the steep road leading to the hotel is unsuitable for large vehicles. Overall, the hotel was dirty, poorly maintained, overpriced, and offered an extremely disappointing experience.

perfect

The two of us stayed at ryokan Reimei at the end of March and we booked the reimei room with an open bath. We had the best experience ever. We could go in for a dip whenever we felt like it. The shower is on the outside with the open bath and the coldness of the weather wasn’t a problem for us since the water of the shower was quite warm and you jump into the onsen right after… (I see lots of comments complaining about that). Dinner/breakfast service time and shuttle bus leaving time was chosen at checkin, we could choose between the times that were convenient for us. The dinner and breakfast were not true kaiseki but it was still delicious and fulfilling. We also brought some pudding from downtown before going to our ryokan and I definitely recommend doing that as there’s no dessert component in the dinner kaiseki. This is not our first ryokan and having an open air bath definitely made the experience 10000 times better!!! We will definitely choose the same room again if we’re coming back to yufuin!!

Heater was very noisy hard to sleep. Location is hard to get to only by car

Good.