Fukahoritei

Fukahoritei is located on the outskirts of Kurume, on the border between Fukuoka and Saga Provinces. There's not much to do in the immediate vicinity, but since we had a car, and we toured the Yanagawa area in the afternoon, it was a convenient place to spend the night in what is considered the highest-end accommodations (somewhat) nearby. It's a small ryokan with just 5 guest rooms, although the size of the property and its grounds made us think it had more rooms than that. Before going into detail, two things stood out as slight negatives. First of all, it is apparent that Fukahoritei is currently understaffed (at least when we stayed) - the main person there even said as much. This was apparent when we pulled into the small parking lot, but nobody came out to greet us. We had to go inside to call for a staff member to come out and help us with our belongings. The employee seemed a bit flustered due to the high workload, and we kind of felt sorry for him. Secondly, there is a lot of construction going on in and around the property. I'm not sure what aspects are being done for the property itself and which parts are outside of their control, but some of the landscaping was torn up with the intention of being redone. And, we heard that they are intending to introduce "glamping" cottages (they seem to be all the rage these days, especially in Asia), and we noticed some of the structures being built beyond a fenced area towards the back of the property. Thankfully, by the time we checked in (around 4:30PM), no construction work was taking place. However, do note that we've read some complaints by Japanese travelers about the noise during the day. Otherwise, Fukahoritei is a relatively upscale ryokan - the rooms are pretty nice, the Onsen quality is top-notch (slimy and smooth!), and the Kaiseki offerings were of high quality. There's not a whole lot to do on site, but they do have two ping pong tables for guests to enjoy in a separate building (we didn't partake because I hate the idea of continually losing to Mrs. KI-NRT.) We stayed in a room called "Karin." It is not the highest category room (that would be "Nagi"), but we were happy with Karin. It's 67 square meters in size, which is reasonably spacious by ryokan Suite room standards, and the room also featured both an indoor and open-air outdoor Onsen (natural hot springs bath.) Compared to most other Onsen we've tried, this one was way up there in quality - the hot springs water was far softer and more slimy - it made our skin feel extremely smooth. It was also free-flowing and temperature regulated, so we were able to jump in and out of the baths to our heart's content. The only drawback - and this goes back to the apparent lack of staffing - when moving the massage chair in the living room in a more unobtrusive location, I noticed a ton of dust in the original location of the chair. This is not acceptable under any circumstances, especially not in Japan. The kaiseki meal for dinner was a