Ginrinsou

We booked the best room on the top floor and spent 7 nights at this high end and extremely expensive ryokan/hotel. Here are the pros and cons: PROS: The food is amazing in terms of presentation, gastronomy and service. The place is immaculately clean. The views a fantastic! We got comfortable Yukatas and overall the place has a very nice traditional vibe.  CONS: They seem to be completely inapt in hosting people who don’t speak Japanese. No one speaks English at this place. None at all! They write that we can “press 9 and call the reception”, but once you do it – you can’t have any conversation with anyone at all. Even when you get down in person to the reception, no one can really communicate with you, even with Google Translate.  They exhibit zero flexibility. The approach is – it’s our way or the highway. All is extremely polite, but no left, no right! Can we have a laundry service arranged? The answer is “no!”. Can we communicate with you via WhatsApp or email? – No! Can we come later to breakfast? No. Can we have dinner at a later time, since we can’t come earlier just this one day? No! Basically, if you want to sleep a bit later during your vacation – forget it! Either show up at 8 or 8:30 am for breakfast, or go hungry! Can we buy your Yukata? – No! Also, we were asked to indicate every day what time we intend to go out – something that adds pressure, as  on vacation one may want to improvise, rather than plan ahead their outings.  Given that this place charges exuberant prices, the lack of the most basic hospitality features (communication, laundry, customer-focused flexibility) is astounding! We now staying at another Ryokan, 90 minutes away and see that everyone can speak some English and the place is much more focused on the needs of a foreign traveler, as opposed on preserving the holy rigidity of an existent system. 

入住家庭套房“銀嶺”。房舍氛圍感無敵，海景無敵，早餐無敵。心心念唸的户外石頭温泉，乾淨清透沒問題。接待的優雅老先生和温柔妹子們氣質無敵，就是英語溝通略費勁，一定準備好翻譯軟件。 缺點就是房間裏一股魚腥味真的很難忽略。包車司機師傅説這種文物級老房子是這樣的，浸透了海水腥鹹氣，除非換木頭否則怎麼清潔也沒用。那好吧～也算體驗的一部分吧～

可能是北海道最好的旅館酒店，酒店建築、風景一流，懷石料理一流，服務也一流，愛了愛了，下次再帶孩子們來。