Naruko Kanko Hotel

We stayed in early November 2023. The room was fine. Nothing special, but clean and roomy. The staff were friendly and helpful. We didn't need English support so I can't say if any spoke English. The onsen is standard good. The rotenburo was quite hot but felt good in measured doses after a day of hiking and one's skin feels silky smooth after soaking in the sulfur baths of this region. The lobby has a decent coffee machine and some complementary beverages. The food was nothing short of excellent and made the stay a success. When making our reservation we opted for set courses and we inquired beforehand if they could do a vegetarian course. Some places will say "no", some will not answer you, and some will say "yes" but you find the chef has little experience with vegetarian meals and it ends up being very tofu heavy. Naruko Kanko Hotel's chef clearly knew what he or she was doing: the set was varied and delicious. I have provided a photo of dinner (before the rice, soup, and something else I can't recall now arrived). The seafood course, selected by my companion, was reportedly equally good. Breakfast (another photo provided) was also very good. As a domestic traveler in Japan, I have stayed at any number of hotels and ryokans over the years and this was one of the best set courses I have had. On the down side, the amenities, which one picks up in the lobby, were very basic, and strangely there were no towels in the room besides the two onsen towels, large and small, i.e. the sink area of the bathroom had no hand towels and we had to ask at the front desk for some. That was excessive cost-cutting, I think. The most recent review here prior to this one appears to be from 2016 and some things have changed, not that they impacted our stay. There is no longer karaoke nor a separate bar. I imagine these were casualties of greatly reduced tourism during the pandemic, which many hotels nation wide are still trying to recover from.