Hotel Pony Onsen

My wife and I recently took a vacation trip to Aomori and stayed around Towada area for enjoying the beautiful nature of red leafs and the most magnificent (Oirase Gorge) river stream coming down from the lake Towada. We stayed at Pony Hotel for 6 nights and the first 2 nights was in a double bedroom and the remaining 4 nights was in a twin room. The reason was cheaper to stay in double bedroom during the peak long weekend in Japan. We both love enjoying natural hot spring and this hotel offer both indoor and outdoor facilities for free when staying with them. The stay plan we reserved was stay with breakfast and we purposely did not choose to include dinner in the hotel. Surprisingly the additional charge set dinner course is only 1500 yen / person (need to notify the hotel front desk at least a night in advance) and the food is very delicious considering the great bargain price for set dinner. One of the hotel staff forgot to notify restaurant to prepare set dinner for us in one of the evening and we ran out of choice to pick from their a la carte menu because there are limited barbecue beef or horse meat selections and mostly are horse meats cooked in different style. We initially refused to try horse meat but under the influence and highly recommended pick from the hotel staff, we end up ordered the horse meat and it was cooked with lot of onion. It was very delicious and even now we still thinking of the horse meat while writing this review. Another great thing is: You can bring your own drinks to the restaurant such as beer, sake, soft drink, etc. free of corkage charge which is seldom allowed in other hotel’s restaurant. The hotel staff is also very friendly and helpful. One of the staff is very fluent in English who can well take care of all our needs and queries at the hotel when we can't speak Japanese. Besides there was a bit of smell from the bathroom in the twin room and a bit noisy from the cars access at the back of hotel, the overall of the room is clean and acceptable. If we were to return to Towada, we definitely will stay at Pony Hotel again!!