Upgraded to a lux Japanese-style cottage - Yumura Onsen, Kofu

Rooms at the Tokiwa Hotel Yumura are splendid enough for the standards of team City-Cost anyway, but when a game of bingo draws out the opportunity for an upgrade, well, you take it. At least we did.

Tokiwa Hotel Yumura in the city of Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture, is, according to hotel management, the city's premier VIP guesthouse.

This grand old dame of Japan's luxury hotel scene has been laying on the Japanese finery for guests to the Yumura hot spring area of Kofu since 1929. Tokiwa Hotel Yumura was an inaugural member of the Japan Ryokan Association and the 6th hotel registered as an international tourist ryokan with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. 

In a corner of the hotel's airy lobby where floor-to ceiling windows look out onto a beautiful Japanese garden, a small gallery reminds guests that Tokiwa Hotel Yumura has welcomed through its doors generations of the imperial family, as well as artists and writers.

(Lobby, Tokiwa Hotel Yumura, Kofu)

The hotel is certainly the place to inspire beautiful prose, centering around nearly 10,000 square meters of classic Japanese garden and serving up meals that look more like works of art than they do breakfast or dinner.

(Dinner, bingo and breakfast, Tokiwa Hotel Yumura, Kofu)

It's unlikely though that team City-Cost's stay at Tokiwa Hotel Yumura will be given a spot in the gallery but we were welcomed with all the grace and humility that we understand from the vagaries of Japan's spirit of omotenashi and have been inspired enough by our stay to create our own bit of humble prose about it. Plus we've never had such a room upgrade before, albeit due the fortunes of a game of bingo.

We'll take what we can get though, and what we got from our lucky numbers was a one night stay in one of the hotel's garden-side cottages. 

Ours was the cottage "keyaki," all 80 square-meters of traditional Japanese construction and tatami flooring which we initially struggled to settle into as we attempted to cover every inch of the place dunk with the sense of giddy abandon that comes with seeing how the other half live, and with the drinks served at dinner.

We were given the keys post-dinner so our futon (for the four of us) had already been set and for reasons that this expat has yet been able to fathom, were laid down in a row as usual with little space in between. A little too close for comfort, especially when you've got a small house to play with -- along with a snorer, a cougher, and a mate who likes to play video games into the wee hours.  

Still, the main washitsu, or traditional Japanese room, of our cottage was spacious at 15 jyou -- 15 tatami mats. It had a thoroughly modern flatscreen TV just to the left of a thoroughly traditional tokonoma -- a little alcove furnished sparingly with art -- the traditional Japanese mantelpiece? 

A small vase or pot sat in the center of keyaki’s tokonoma and in the words of a visiting Japanese friend staying in another part of the hotel, “I don’t know what it is, but it’s definitely expensive.”

We gave it a wide berth, then, and instead turned out attention to the private rotenburo, or outdoor bath.

For the foreigners in our party, having a private onsen saved us from having to get our kit off in front of the onsen-going public. In keyaki cottage we only had to do so in front of three others, and whoever it was that wandered in to check out our room upgrade. And when you’ve had a few drinks, these things are made much easier anyway.  

The Yumura Hot Spring area of Kofu has a history spanning some 1,200 years. The people in these parts will tell you that Yumura was the secret onsen hot-spot of Kofu’s idolized warlord Takeda Shingen -- he of the “shingen-mochi” fame, so some theories go of Yamanashi’s signature snack. Rotenburo outside the hotel’s cottages are fed “kakenagashi-style,” tapping directly into the hot-spring source. Some are constructed from cypress. Others in the butai-zukuri-style, resembling something like a performance stage. Ours was made from ceramic. 

(Rotenburo outdoor bath, keyaki cottage, Tokiwa Hotel Yumura)

(Gratuitous rotenburo shot)

All four of us could have fit into it but the layout of our futon was proximity enough, so we took it in turns to have a dip.  

What else do you get from 80 square-meters of traditional Japanese lux cottage? Well, you get a garden terrace (sheltered with bamboo blinds that we didn’t take the time to figure out how to pull up, or part), a small room adjoining the rotenburo furnished with sofa and coffee table, a smaller eight-tatami washitsu with central table and tea set, a bath and shower room (with hinoki cypress bathtub), separate toilet, a small room with refrigerator, kettle and sink, and a spacious front hall.

And unfettered access to Tokiwa Hotel Yumura’s gardens.  

The gardens here ranked third for two years running (2012 and 2013) in the Shiosai Project, Sukiya Living Environment Rankings.  

The Shiosai Project was set up to shed light on gardens in Japan that received scant attention from the media in favor of larger, older, more historical marquee gardens. Instead then, Shiosai Project focuses on gardens attached to living environments and facilities such as ryokan and restaurants. All gardens in the project should afford visitors year-round access.

The first Sukiya Living Environment Rankings came out in 2003 and have been updated with the help of more than 30 experts annually, ever since. The project is coordinated by staff of Sukiya Living Magazine, published by The Journal of Japanese Gardening (JOJG). As of 2018, the gardens at Tokiwa Hotel Yumura had slipped to a ranking of 14.  

Third or 14th, when you can wake up of a morning and almost immediately step out into gardens like those at the Tokiwa Hotel, you know that you’re doing alright in life. That or you lucked out with a room upgrade.  

A stay at the keyaki cottage looks to start from around 40,000 yen per person per night, including dinner and breakfast, according to the Tokiwa Hotel Yumura homepage (Japanese version).

Oh, and even without an upgrade, regular rooms here are splendid enough.

Tokiwa Hotel Yumura: 2 Chome-5-21 Yumura, Kofu, Yamanashi 400-0073

Web: https://tokiwa-hotel.co.jp/e_index.html