Hakusan Onsen Hakusanri

I don’t have any photos of the 7 meals our group ate here, because the food items and the presentation looked rather ordinary. What was extraordinary was the quality of the food. I had the very best tempura of my lifetime of eating a lot of tempura, including in some famous restaurant. Especially outstanding was its holder: instead of putting the tempura in a paper, it was in a deep-fried harumaki (spring or egg roll) wrapper that had been fried in the shape of a cup. It was crunchy and edible and absolutely not oily. Go there even just for the tempura, and you’ll be happy. For example, all tempura places serve eggplant tempura. This place, instead of cooking the usual Japanese eggplants used very small ones, cooked whole. The tempura was so good that the usual dipping sauce was unnecessary. We added only a dab of salt. Another dish I enjoyed was lotus root stuffed with crab. The sashimi was incredible. At one meal, small cooked and flavored fish (tsukudani) were served inside Chinese lantern plant “lanterns”. Very pretty! I can’t say enough about how wonderful the meals were. We had three dinners there; each one had different items from the others. The same was true at breakfast. There were no menus. We ate what we were served. The food was mainly Japanese, but some of the breakfasts included western items such as fried eggs and ham. Hakusanri is 40 minutes’ drive from Matto station, in the mountains. The location is very quiet. In the lobby, beautiful hand-crafted jewelry and ceramics were for sale, as was fresh garden produce and home-made condiments. The room arrangements were strange, to put it mildly. Some rooms had no toilet or sink, and only a 15-cm.-diameter mirror hanging on the wall. Our group stayed in many rooms. None of them had a tub or shower, running water, or a phone. Each room had its own air conditioning unit, so we could set the temperature at a level that was comfortable for us. The hotel’s public ofuro (spa/bath) was pleasant. The water was not so hot as to be unbearable for a non-Japanese. The ofuro had a view of woods, and the facilities were easy to use. The ofuro is also used by the public during set hours. I recommend that you find out when hotel guests only are allowed there and go at those times. We were charged extra for bath towels (100 yen per person per stay). In a room where three of us stayed, there were only 2 hand towels. Each guest received one free bottle of water per stay. All the rooms are on the second floor, up a steep and narrow staircase. There is no elevator. Those of us who had big suitcases had trouble getting up to their rooms. There was no bellhop to assist with that. The beds were firm. All the rooms were different in design. Most had both regular beds and bunk beds. None had arrangements for sleeping with futons on the floor. Some had only one table; some had two. Every room had a small refrigerator. Most of the meals were served at tables with chairs. For breakfast, seating was on cushions on the floor, but low chairs were available. Several in our group have bad knees, but they were comfortable using those chairs. Toilets and sinks with mirrors were available on both the first and second floors. Although the dinners and breakfasts were excellent, I don’t recommend eating lunch here. The menu is limited and the food is at best ordinary. Perhaps the chef is off at lunch time. So far as I could tell, none of the staff spoke English, so be sure you have a Japanese friend or a translation app with you. The public facilities at Hakusanri are closed on Thursdays. The cleaning staff seemed also to be off that day. Our rooms were untouched that day, but taken care of on the other days of our stay.