Ryokans – A Return to Nothingness

Cities, restaurants, temples, shops, markets?  Cultural experiences?  Museums?  Bars, late night jazz clubs?  Dancing?  Drinking?  Who needs any of it? Japan offers, instead, a unique and magical one of a kind opportunity to explore the depths of your soul, and live to tell the tale.  Ryokans, a type of inn attached to natural hot springs, are fundamental to Japanese travel and lucky, lucky, lucky you if you find one you can call home.

For two or three days, it works like this.  You arrive by taxi or are fetched from the train station.  You deposit your shoes at the entrance where you are greeted by bowing staff, dressed in kimonos, who usher you down tatami-matted hallways, imbued with silence.  Passing blond, unadorned walls, you reach a room, mostly bare of furniture, get undressed and put on a yukata, a type of robe, sip green tea and then undress again to take the first hot bath of the visit.

The baths are located in open spaces outdoors or in large rooms in view of nature, and sitting as naked as the day you were born, you soak, calm yourself, close your eyes, and drift.  Repeat this as often as you like during your stay.  I’m in favor of at least six times daily during a three day stay.

At night you dine in private rooms on kaiseki meals – small courses of seasonal delicacies.  You sleep on a futon and awake to breakfast and later, lunch, in your room or in small dining areas – Japanese or Western dishes, all splendid.

The ryokans vary widely and each one has a highly individual stamp.  Typically old, these properties were once a prerogative of the aristocracy and being family owned much of the time, each goes about things in its own way. One of the best in the country is Beniya Makuya.  Located in the Kanazawa region, this ryokan is an unusual combination of tradition and modernity.  The owners, Sachiko and Kazunari Nakamichi, continue the age old tradition of the ryokan – idleness that leads to contentment and a Buddhist-like return to nothingness.  At the same time, as a Relais & Chateaux member, they enhance that ancient experience by also offering yoga classes and massages. The rooms here are gorgeous, the views inspiring and the food delicious.  With bare white walls throughout, the silence is practically blessed.

An old school ryokan in Karuizawa that is a counterpoint to the luxury of Beniya Mukaya is Tsuruya.  Located at the end of a long, lovely walking street filled with shops selling regional, agricultural products like honey, jam, and wine, Tsuruya looks like a B&B that your grandmother, if she was Japanese, might be running.  The sitting room is terribly English, the baths soothing and the food abundant.  Tsuruya abuts a forest, and the exquisite setting is one of the best things about a stay there.

Either way, luxury or Victorian, a stay at a ryokan is easily one of the best ways to immerse yourself in Japanese culture and forget who you are and what made you that way.