Nice baths, comfortable traditional rooms, a ping pong table, and all you can drink alcohol with dinner. The staff was very kind too, especially the foreign workers who were warm and made us feel comfortable.

The food was really not something to look forward to. A big buffet of stale food, even when eating right at the start of dinner time. We would have preferred to not pay for meals and eat out for dinner every night instead.

Relaxing, comfortable room (Japanese style), massage chairs, good location.

The all inclusive Ryokan is fantastic, it worth’s the high price. Love the private Onsen and the public Onsen isn’t crowded at all. The Massage chair is absolutely a must try! We did not try the karaoke room or the table tennis but would have, if we had stayed longer. The bus that took us to the snow monkey park is right behind the hotel. A visit to the town Shibu Onsen is just a pleasant stroll away. The room was spacious and its nice to be able to spread out a little with all our luggages after staying in small hotel rooms in Tokyo.

The hotel is just 5-10 mins walk from the train station but walking uphill from the hotel back to the station with the luggage is a pain. Wished they provide a shuttle. We had a few English speaking staff on our first night at dinner but not on our second night, so it was not easy to communicate with staff for some requests and some questions about the meal. But all in all we do recommend this hotel, it’s mostly to our satisfactory.

Breakfast was good, the on-site karaoke was a nice touch, the rooms were comfortable, but the ability to use the private onsen rooms was especially amazing. These private onsens were located down the hall from our room and were available on a walk-in basis (no reservation necessary) but we found they were often available when we wanted to bathe. If they were both occupied, we would just post-up in the massage chairs outside and wait for one to open up. This set-up was perfect for our family of four since most baths (including the open "public" onsen on the first floor of this property) are segregated by gender. We got to the property during a snow storm, and the private onsen rooms were perfect for sitting outside in the hot bath and letting snowflakes fall on your tongue. It was central for walking to many good restaurants, the train station, and Lawson for snacks and cheap beer. Yamanouchi is a cool little town, still very sleepy, which we mostly found was a positive for us, but those expecting a lively resort town will find it lacking.

Though it wasn't a really big deal, the rooms were not made up for us daily, and though we were provided fresh linens every day, the rooms were not cleaned or turned over for us at any point during our stay. Other ryokans I've stayed at will provide the service of setting up the room for relaxing during the day and roll out futons at night, here they did not. It was a bit challenging to communicate with staff during check-in, and there were some complications with how many people would be staying in each of the rooms we booked, but that's more our fault for having basically zero Japanese language skills. It was a little far from the ski hill (45 mins to an hour by bus), and the terrible bus schedule made it difficult to get a good breakfast in and still have time to get up to the slopes, but that's no fault of the ryokan. I would recommend car rental if planning to ski and staying here.

Private onsen.