While I’m starting to get the hang of travel between cities under good value, when it comes to more rural destinations, I’m clueless. I prefer being around the city, staying in awesome chain hotels and experiencing street food off local markets, so finding a ryokan outside of Osaka was something that was completely out of my element. Fortunately my dad offered to help, and he’s done a couple of “tatami runs” before.
The Yumesenkei Amahara hotel is located in Sumoto, a stunning town on Awaji Island. It’s quite lively, though the hotel is quite aways from any nearby attractions, so we drove to get around the area. Yumesenkei seems to be a bigger complex that encapsulates a few hotels, with Amahara being the more premium-seeming of the options.
The exterior of the hotel is rather understated, and blends in with the local buildings.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Exterior
A few sakura trees loomed around outside the hotel building. Sakura was in full bloom during our visit, so that made for some very nice views whenever we stepped outside the hotel.
Yumesenkei Complex Sumoto Sakura
While the entire Yumesenkei complex shares an outdoor parking lot, there’s a little side entrance to Amahara, with a rather understated entrance.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Entrance
At this point an associate on the parking lot had escorted our car to a parking space near the hotel building, and was helping us unload our luggage.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Entrance
The hotel’s lobby featured dark, muted tones, as well as some comfortable seating. It was a cosy place to spend some time.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Lobby
To the side of the lobby was a small working area, with communal seating, some reading material, as well as a PC.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Lobby
We were escorted by a Chinese associate to our room for in-room check-in, whereas a few other associates took care of our luggage. We were assigned room 2003, a Wa-Yo (Japanese-European) room on the second floor of the hotel. The hotel features five floors, though in my understanding the rooms on the bottom floors feature private onsens, as our room did.
As you can see from the floorplan below, the hotel has a rather small footprint, with only four rooms on each floor.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Floorplan
The hotel featured a single lift that operated across its five floors. However, since the lobby was on the first floor, I never bothered actually using the lift.
The hallways featured similar dark, muted tones to the lobby. If this was at a city hotel I’d say the hallways were slightly outdated, but I thought they were perfect for this hotel.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Hallways
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Entrance
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto
Check-in: Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Room Type: Wa-Yo Room
Room Number: 2003
Stay duration: 2 nights
Check-out: Thursday, April 5, 2018
Our room featured an entryway that forked left into the bedroom area, straight into the living room, and right into the bathroom.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Entryway
The living area was stunning, and featured a Japanese tatami mat floor, a couple of beanbags, a flatscreen TV, and some comfortable seating, including a loveseat and an armchair.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Living Area
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Living Area
Since there wasn’t a “real” table in this room, the low table between the loveseat and armchair served as the best place to work in the living area.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Living Area Seating
The beanbags themselves were comfortable, though on the small side. They looked really cute, though, and I loved the checkered pattern. They were more of beanbags you could rest your head on, rather than those that you could sink your entire body into. Regardless, they were a thoughtful touch, and brightened up the otherwise bare floor.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Living Area Beanbags
The floor also served as where the tatami mattresses were laid out at night, where an associate would come in to set our beds. The tatami beds consisted of a very nice duvet, and a significantly less comfortable pillow – they were small, flat, and I used my backpack as a pillow instead.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Living Area Tatami
The bedroom area was partitioned off, though only by a wall that was waist height. This was perfect for us, since it allowed the natural light to permeate through the entire room, while also preventing it from feeling too sparse or cavernous. Other families that enjoy their individual privacy may not enjoy this as much, though.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Bedroom
The bedroom featured two comfortable beds (the mattresses were slightly thicker than the tatami mattresses), and much better pillows, which were appreciated.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Bedroom
The bedroom featured a separate flatscreen TV – I found it quite interesting that they couldn’t find a way to make a single TV viewable from both sides, given this was essentially one large room.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Bedroom TV
The bathroom spanned the length of the room, and featured a sink with a chair, as well as a separate shower.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Bathroom
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Bathroom Sink
The shower itself had amazing water pressure, as is the case with rural hotels in Japan. Also, unlike my past experiences at “fusion” ryokans, the shower was comfortable, and didn’t feel like needles of water were piercing into my back.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Bathroom Shower
The bathroom also featured quirky mix-n-match toiletries, with Awaji Incense toiletries in the shower.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Bathroom Toiletries
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Bathroom Toiletries
Near the door was a separately enclosed toilet, though there was no sink, so you had to walk to the bathroom to wash your hands.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Bathroom Enclosed Toilet
While I thought the room was quite nice, the balcony was probably the highlight of the room. First there were a couple of chairs.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Balcony Seating
Then there was the private onsen. Unfortunately we never ended up using this onsen, as the bulk of our leisure time in the room was spent in one of the hotel’s big communal onsens.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Balcony Private Onsen
The balcony faced east, and overlooked Osaka Bay. Unfortunately it was overcast during both of our mornings at the hotel, so the sunrises weren’t impressive (though still very nice).
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Balcony View
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Balcony View
The room was on the second floor, and below us was a roof that housed the walkway to the communal onsens. Unfortunately this meant that the roof was hard to clean, meaning that we had a direct
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Balcony…View
Overall, I thought the room was perfect. It wasn’t the most private, and there weren’t any universal power ports, though the room was much more modern than I was expecting.
By the balcony was free water, as well as a Nespresso machine with capsules (which I wouldn’t have expected at a non-chain ryokan hotel, but I’m certainly not complaining!).
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Amenities
Under that platform was the minibar. While all the soft drinks were paid, there was a bowl of complimentary strawberries provided, which I loved.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Minibar
The room was also stocked with yukatas and different Japanese robes. In theory you’re supposed to wear them to dinner, which we did on the first night. However, everyone else was in casual clothes, and it was too easy to reveal the unrevealable in these yukatas, so I didn’t end up wearing the yukatas much, apart from when I was heading to the onsen.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Amenities
On the plus side, they were pretty stylish…I think. 😉
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Yukata
The room also had an abundance of slippers – one for each of us upon entering the room, and separate, more supportive wooden slippers to wear on the balcony.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Slippers
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Slippers
In-room check-in was done at our room upon our arrival, and we were given a comprehensive introduction to the entirety of the hotel grounds. The associate mentioned that there would be free coffee and tea in the lobby, as well as wine and whiskey after 8 PM. She also detailed where the communal hot springs were, and recommended us to watch the sunrise (I never watched the sunrise from the hot springs, though as you can see above, our room also faced east, so we could see the sunrise from there).
She also brought a welcome drink and snack – mochi with cherry blossom sauce. Cherry blossom sauce isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, though the mochi was delicious. She also mentioned that check-out was at 11 AM.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Wa-Yo Room Welcome Drink and Dessert
After that she gave us a tour of the room, which entailed checking out the view, telling us which yukatas belonged to which gender, and filling up the onsen, despite the fact that we never used it. While some of the explanations were quite long-winded, I appreciated the room tour, as this isn’t your average, intuitive hotel room.
She also gave us WiFi codes. The WiFi ranged from slow to dysfunctional, so this isn’t a place where you’ll want to work online and make video calls. However, having expected that coming in, I pre-loaded some work offline, and at points in the middle of the night the WiFi was even fast enough to load short YouTube videos.
The coffee in the lobby was served through a coffee machine, though I loved the addition of juice and San Pellegrino sparkling water, served in an ice bucket.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Lobby Coffee
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Lobby Free Beverages
I’ll share my pictures of the food at the hotel in a separate post, though it was served at the hotel’s restaurant, connected directly to the lobby. I loved the wooden tones of the restaurant, and the food was great as well.
Yumesenkei Amahara Sumoto Restaurant
The hotel also features great public grounds. Most remarkable are their onsens – there are several to choose from, as we had access to any of the onsens across the entire Yumesenkei complex. It’s worth noting that the onsen venues “switch” genders every day, so a male onsen one day may serve as a female onsen the next, just so everyone gets the complete mix of onsen venue options to choose from.
Walking around an entire complex with body parts flailing around isn’t something that I’d repeat again, though I enjoyed the views. The first night we went to one of the venues closer to our building, which was more crowded (and also only partially exposed), and the second night we went to an awesome venue by the main Yumesenkei building, where we got an exclusive outdoor portion to ourselves (entailing a cold walk down a couple of stone staircases in the nude) with great views over Osaka Bay.
Awaji Yumesenkei Hotel
It’s also worth noting that Sumoto is a stunning little town. It features a couple of big malls, it’s biker friendly, and the views, especially on a clear day, are amazing. It’s a good base to explore Awaji Island, since it’s pretty much smack in the middle.
Sumoto Area During Sunset
Check-out at the hotel was also smooth and done in the lobby, where all our costs were wrapped up through credit card. When we drove away, the staff waved at us until our car disappeared around the corner.
Bottom Line: Yumesenkei Amahara
On the surface it seems like I was very impressed with the hotel. And I was. I loved the design of the room – it incorporated Western modernism with Japanese flair – and the food was very good as well. On top of that, the onsen experience was great, even if I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to bathe in an onsen by choice. I also loved the city it was located in, which was quaint, not too touristy, and beautiful.
However, the experience just didn’t “wow” me like some others did. During my ryokan run in 2014, I stayed at the Hoteiya Yufuin, where I was treated like a guest in someone else’s home. They had so much pride in their activities, including their popcorn roasting, their food, their rooms and their services. They gave us full information about the city we were in, and proactively gave us recommendations of what to do.
Since this hotel came at a similar price point, I probably raised my expectations too high – everyone was friendly, as is almost tacitly the case in Japan, and the room was really pleasant, though the property itself felt relatively soulless. It felt like a very luxurious business hotel, where we were offered a beautifully designed place to sleep, and were to go on with our lives throughout the day. I feel like it’s such a lost opportunity – the hotel grounds were beautiful and activities were abundant, but the associates just felt so detached from the hotel guests. I guess that’s partially to do with the average guest demographic at this hotel, since we saw a lot of Chinese families coming for a short vacation, so associates have to deal with a language barrier 24/7.
In other words, my 2014 ryokan run felt like a culturally immersive experience in itself, while this felt more like somewhat of a reminiscence of that trip, instead of a memory to be made in itself.
Personally I preferred staying at the Hilton Osaka, since it was similarly decorated with a lot of Japanese flair, but also contained most of the elements you’d expect at an actual business hotel, such as fast WiFi. However, I realise that isn’t exactly a fair comparison to make.
Read more from this trip:
Have you stayed at one of these “fusion” ryokans before? How was your experience?
The toilet is equipped with a mini wash basin on top of the cistern. 😉