Firstly, the ryokan is within walking distance to iconic sannomachi street (5mins) with many unique shops selling different kinds of local product. One can easily spend a day
walking there.
Secondly, the ryokan serves delicious dinner and breakfast in your room at your comfort!
Staff friendly, we loved the ladies, we had our own en-suite Onsen so not sure about the communal ones, we had the dinner in our room one evening, superb, breakfasts were great, we were sad to leave .
Mrs Tanabe was most welcoming. The location is excellent and the Ryokan looks good from the outside.I found the room uncomfortable....and the thin futon even more so..
Quite expensive for what you get
I have been to Japan many many times and am a big fan. Perhaps the Ryokan facility does not suit me!
We stayed here for 2 nights. Check in and out process was smooth.
Our ryokan room has a lot of space and comfortable. Aoyama-San, was the old lady who prepared the set up of our in-room meals (breakfast and dinner). She was very nimble for her age, warm, sincere, funny and chatty (despite our language differences).
The dinner... oh my... one of our best ryokan meals as they made an effort to diversify the meal spread by including international dishes (like baked curry veggie, chicken chop, etc) with Japanese fusion, so that foreign tourists can enjoy. There was so much food that we were still not hungry by the following day's lunch.
The onsen was small but not crowded. Temperatures just nice and comfortable to take a short dip.
Overall, we enjoyed this charming ryokan and our experience in Takayama city.
There are definitely some positives: Location is just a 10 minute walk from the station and just a couple blocks from the Old Merchant's Quarters; the kaiseki dinner we had and the breakfasts were good; the yukatas were colourful and comfortable to wear; the staff were very friendly.
I'm guessing that as ryokans go, this is very good. I totally understand that this is a traditional Japanese inn and I'm glad I had the chance to experience it! Surprisingly, I found the futon fairly comfortable.
What I didn't like was the lack of respect (for lack of a better word) for the room being our personal space during our stay. It seems the staff would come into your room whenever; on our last day there, we had popped out and came back to use the washroom and gather our bags before checking out at 10:00 am, but the staff had already been in our room and removed the towels, etc.