Hoshinoya

Hoshinoya is a resort in the town of Karuizawa, about an hour from Tokyo on the Shinkansen line to Nagano. It is a blissful place and a great spot to chill out, sort of the anti-Tokyo.

Hoshinoya is an onsen (hot springs) resort built along -- or just about on top of -- a river, and water influences everything. You hear the sound of water everywhere when you're outside -- listen carefully and the sound is coming from multiple directions. There are two communal baths for guests, one a traditional indoor/outdoor onsen, and the other an indoor "meditation spa." The latter is special, and includes a set of rooms that grow increasingly dark.

There are 3 restaurants -- casual Japanese, formal Japanese, and casual French. I've stuck to the 2 Japanese ones (including a kaiseki room service set); the food and presentation were perfectly acceptable, but by no means exceptional.

The room accommodations are contemporary and comfortable. My room has an entryway, a bedroom with platform bed, living area with table and day bed, and a terrace with small table and day bed. As I recall, there are several different room styles available. Hoshinoya is not a small place by any means (maybe 50-60 suites?), and not all of the terraces seem especially private. The midweek clientele includes lots of families. As best I can tell, I'm the only Westerner here, but many of the staff do speak some English.

Karuizawa is at about 1000m/3300ft, so it's chillier than Tokyo. Fall colors have just begun, and there are plenty of trails for walking and enjoying the scenery. A few more photos:

Kyoto: washout

Kyoto was a soggy washout. I had planned to spend the day walking through the traditional, historic parts of town, taking some wonderful photos to preserve the memories of a distant journey, but Nature has intervened. A daylong shitmist and ear-level clouds kept me to the covered shopping streets. The best finds were a bookstore with a good selection of English-language titles (the 7th floor of the BAL store, on Kawaramachi), a bar named Fenway Park, and a surprisingly good conveyor-sushi place. Every plate at the latter was 173 Yen (about $1.60) -- cheap enough and good enough for a serious pig-out.

The place where I stayed, the Kyoto Hotel Okura, is comfortable enough, but someone really ought to tell the management that the 1950s are over. The bellmen and bellwomen (ok, they wouldn't have had bellwomen in the 50s) all wear these ridiculous gray and burgundy uniforms with little hats that would be a parody of itself if it weren't, which it isn't. But the hotel's location is dead solid perfect -- next to Gion, 2 steps from the main shopping streets, and connected directly to the subway.

This country does so many things right, it's amazing. All of the trains and subways run *exactly* on time. (It made the news yesterday when one of the bullet train lines had a 2-hour delay.) And for those who don't like to schlep luggage, they offer this fantastic service where you can forward your suitcase(s) overnight to your next hotel. It's all cheap and convenient, and it makes travel infinitely simpler.