Staying in a Ryokan

A ryokan is a traditional Japanese inn — tatami floors, futon bedding laid out in the evening, a multi-course kaiseki dinner and usually a hot-spring bath. The important word is traditional: not a hotel decorated in a Japanese style, but a building that kept the older way of living and asks you to live in it for a night. Check-in is usually around 16:00, and where dinner is included you will generally be asked to arrive by 18:00 — firmer than a hotel, because the kitchen is cooking to a schedule.

What happens when you arrive at a ryokan?

Check-in is usually around 16:00, and if dinner is included you will generally be asked to arrive by 18:00. This is firmer than at a hotel: the kitchen is cooking a multi-course meal to a schedule, and turning up at nine means missing it. Check-out is early too, typically 10:00. Most ryokan will hold your luggage if you arrive before your room is ready, and many will collect you from the nearest station if you ask when booking.

What are the shoe and slipper rules?

You take your shoes off at the entrance and change into slippers provided by the inn. Then you take the slippers off again before stepping onto tatami — tatami is walked on in socks or bare feet, never in slippers. There is a separate pair of slippers that lives in the toilet and never leaves it. None of this is tested; the staff will steer you, and getting it slightly wrong is not a problem.

What is a ryokan room like?

Tatami floor, sliding paper screens, a low table with legless chairs around it, and a tea set with a thermos of hot water. Often a narrow veranda with a couple of chairs looking onto a garden, a river or a mountain. There will usually be a private toilet, but frequently no shower or bath in the room — you wash communally, which is the point rather than an omission.

What is missing is as striking as what is there: no bed, no wardrobe, no desk, very little furniture at all. After dinner the staff clear the table and lay out a futon — a thin mattress — directly on the tatami. The room you ate in is the room you sleep in.

A yukata is provided, and in hot-spring towns it is normal to wear it around the inn and out into the streets.

One practical warning

Traditional wooden buildings are not well insulated, and a ryokan in spring or autumn can be genuinely cold in the evening and early morning. It is worth checking before you book what heating the room has, and whether a lined winter yukata (a tanzen) is provided. Nobody mentions this and it is the most common way a first ryokan stay disappoints.

What is kaiseki dinner at a ryokan?

Most ryokan rates include dinner and breakfast, and dinner is typically kaiseki: around ten small courses, built on local and seasonal ingredients, arranged with real care and served either in your room or in a dining room. Breakfast is a lighter version of the same idea.

This is why a ryokan's nightly rate is not comparable to a hotel's. You are not paying for a room; you are paying for a room, a chef and two meals. Drinks are the exception — beer and sake are charged separately.

How much does a ryokan cost?

Expect roughly ¥25,000–45,000 per room for two people, meals included, with genuinely luxurious inns going well beyond that. Solo travellers get a poor deal: single occupancy is often unavailable, or priced close to the double rate, because the meals are per person and the room is the room.

How do you choose a ryokan, and for how long?

A few things worth confirming before you book, because the word ryokan covers a wide range:

• Room style — some inns have converted rooms to Western beds. If you want tatami and futon, check.
• Meals — kaiseki served properly, or a buffet? Both exist under the same label.
• The bath — is the water a genuine hot spring, or heated tap water? Both are pleasant; only one is an onsen.
• Not a minshuku or a hostel — those are simpler, cheaper family-run lodgings, good in their own right but a different experience.

One or two nights is the sweet spot. The pleasure of a ryokan is in the arc of the evening — bath, dinner, sleep, breakfast — and by the third night you would rather have moved on to a different one in a different valley. Book further ahead for the foliage weeks of November, when the mountain inns fill first.

Note also that no tipping is expected anywhere in Japan, ryokan included. It is not a shortcut to better service, and offering can cause awkwardness.

How does onsen bathing work at a ryokan?

Many of the best ryokan are in hot-spring towns, and the bath is half the reason to go. The etiquette, the tattoo question and the towns worth travelling to are covered separately in our guide to onsen stays.

Browse the best ryokans in Kyoto to see what the range looks like in practice. Choosing the right base, and judging the hotels once you are looking at them, is covered in our guide to where to stay in Japan.