Day 267: Jozankei Onsen

Day of highs and lows. We typically stay at cheaper places between the $20 -$90 per night range; Mary wanted a treat yourself day visit to the Jozankei Onsen town and splurge on a nicer hotel, especially with the leaf change into spooky season.

We rode the bus into the mountains and couldn’t get enough of the trees. Due to the 2024 Japanese heat wave, peak leave change season was moved a few weeks from its original days (early October to November). Either way, we still got great colors.

After arriving to the hotel, we dropped our bags and walked around the town. Made plans to go canoeing and walked to the canoe rental address….which appeared to be someone’s home that said “No trespassing.” We sent them an email and continuing exploring.

Luckily, we came upon another canoe company and their guide who was just packing up some canoes from a previous trip. We asked if it was possible to join the next trip and he said yes! It’s a small trip (only an hour) but you can canoe in the fall foliage, canoe against a second river, and a hot spring that enter the water. It was so much fun and ended the good part of the day.

To the bad part, the really nice hotel we booked…..kind of sucked…a lot. Won’t go into too many details but essentially after traveling for 10 months and booking 1 room, 2 adults, apparently this was the single time we didn’t list two adults on the reservation (read reviews online to learn there are a lot of glitches like this with this hotel) and they charged ALOT for the second person. Also, we paid for a room with a view of the river, trees, and mountain and they put us in a room with a parking lot view. The final shitty things were:

1. The hotel ran out of the traditional Japanese bath wear Yukatas….
2. They gave us free tickets to a local light show that’s 15 minutes away and only open from 7:00pm to 9:00pm…and scheduled our dinner for 7:45pm. We pretty much ran out at 6:45 and powered walked through the show to make dinner.

Overall, it felt like a slap in the face to pay so much for a really disappointing experience. After getting past the 5 star reviews on Google and Booking, it was clear a lot of guests experienced the same frustrations we had. Good reminder that paying more doesn’t always get better experiences and that it’s worth reading why people poorly rate a place.

Anyway, made up for the experience by drinking our Autumn Sake / wine from Otaru and watching Solo Leveling.

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