Postcard
From a Ryokan
Six in the morning, before anybody has moved, which is the whole reason to be here.
The takeaway
A ryokan is not a hotel with tatami in it. It is a completely different proposition, and the joy of it is that you hand yourself over to somebody else’s timetable for eighteen hours and stop making decisions entirely.
You arrive in the middle of the afternoon – not the evening, which is the first thing people get wrong, because the stay is the evening. Your shoes come off at the door and do not go back on. Somebody brings green tea and a small sweet to your room and explains, gently, what happens next. You change into a yukata, and from that point you are dressed the same as everybody else in the building, which does something to a person that I did not expect.
Then the bath. Onsen etiquette is simple and non-negotiable: wash thoroughly, sitting down, at the taps before you get in; the small towel never touches the water; no swimsuits. If you have tattoos, book a room with a private onsen or a kashikiri bath you reserve by the hour – say so when booking and it is nearly always solvable.
Dinner is kaiseki, served in your room or in a private dining room, and it goes on for two hours across eight or ten small courses that follow the season and nothing else. There is no menu to choose from. Eat what arrives in the order it arrives.
While you are eating, somebody makes up the futon on the tatami. You come back to a bed that was not there an hour ago, in the room where you had dinner, in a building where everyone is asleep by ten.
Book one night, not three. It is wonderfully intense and ceremonious, and it is perfect at one night – two at the outside, if the onsen is exceptional. Pay for the room with the private bath; it is the difference between a nice night and the night you remember. And go for the room with the view rather than the biggest room, because you will spend the evening sitting on the floor looking out of it.
The good ones – Hakone, Fuji, the Japan Alps, the Kyoto hills – go nine to twelve months ahead for blossom and autumn dates, and several of the best will not take a booking from a stranger at all.