Minamitei

You can have a room if you want with your own private shower and hotsprings-fed tub so you then have a choice of staying in if you don’t feel like going to the public bath for a wash and a soak. There’s a lovely view across the stream to a little Japanese style hut. And most of the year you gaze peacefully on beautiful greenery covering the trees growing up the hillside. You don’t realize you are so close to a city of almost three million. Dinner the night I was there included the usual selection of mostly unfamiliar but delicious items - plus not just one but two “cook your own” specialties: shabu shabu (or perhaps it was sukiyaki) on the left and the most tender Kobe or Wagyu steak with accompaniments on the right. You certainly never went to bed hungry. You also got a feeling of possibly frontier or at least rough-and-ready history when you read in the room instructions that “the following items may not be brought into guest rooms or corridors” including “highly inflammable items like gunpowder” and “Guns or swords which are prohibited by law.” Also: “Gambling in the guest rooms or corridors and other such immoral behaviour is not permitted.” A very quiet area.