Setonite

I had kind of an odd but fun stay at Setonite, for a night stopover before heading to Naoshima. To start, I called the hotel to see if they had any space for the night, and they told me that they’re fully booked. But when I looked online, I saw rooms available, so I thought, ok, I’ll just book online, maybe it was a language barrier thing. In reality, they probably just didn’t want to deal with the stress of an English speaking guest given their English is very limited, and, at least when I was there, all of the other clientele were locals. When I got there and explained I had booked online, it appeared to cause a little mayhem, as they ran around trying to make it work. I did have to wait a while to get taken to my room, but somehow the staff seemed so nice and good natured that I couldn’t bring myself to be bothered by it. The room was a sort of glamping-style experience, serviceable but fairly basic, and I will say the guest area while nice is not quite as appealing as in the photos. It did come with a fairly stern set of rules in a laminated piece of paper, including “bedtime is 10pm!” Communicating with the staff became such a production, through non-stop use of Google translate, that the staff and I couldn’t help but laugh about it. And overall, I felt the staff were easily the best thing about the hotel - they all seemed like they were good friends with one another, a bunch of young and friendly locals that were both having fun and attending to the guests at the same time. The campfire at night (with marsh mallows provided by the hotel) was a nice touch to the experience. They made me feel at home, and I’m very grateful for their hospitality.