Meitoya So

Location is convenient , The food was delicious both breakfast & dinner Highly recommend. The staff were also very pleasant. love

Overall, a good hotel with good food, good hot spa baths, and good access to ski lifts. In more detail... A staff member came to pick us up from the bus terminus after calling the hotel, which may be a little too far uphill from the bus terminus to take your luggage up by yourself, unless you are travelling light. We had help bringing our luggage into the hotel from the van. The hotel is in wooded mountainside surroundings. Check-in was easy. There is a lift. The view was great, but we had a room on the downhill side of the hotel. Rooms on the uphill side would not have such a good view. Yukata, towel, bath cloth, toothpaste and brush were all replaced daily. Futons were remade daily. The breakfast smorgasbord and evening meals were all varied, plentiful, and of a decent standard, including local produce, vegetable pickles, etc. The dinners included beef sukiyaki, shabu shabu, pork hotpot, seafood hotpot, chicken hotpot, all of which you cook at your table. There was also a tray with a variety of vegetable, fish, egg, and other small, varied, and tasty dishes, some unusual and very good (e.g., ibura gako). The location is not the closest to the nearest ropeway/gondolas/lifts, but only a 5 minute or so walk, which would be very awkward in ski boots. You need to walk up in your own shoes/boots (waterproof is better), then store them in a paid locker before changing into ski boots. There is a souvenir shop. There is a complimentary coffee/tea bar in the afternoon. The hot spring bath is good, with plentiful hot water and a good temperature. The outdoor bath is in pleasant wooded surroundings. You can choose from 3 different baths, each with different temperatures. The baskets for storing your yukata are on shelves, without locks, but you can see most of them from the indoor bath. After checkout, we got a lift back to the bus terminus. You can store luggage after checking out (for a fee). There is a ping-pong table (for a fee).

Overall, the futons (on tatami) were quite uncomfortable and the hotel would not supply extra futons. The single blanket was too hot. There was a fair bit of noise outside our window from melting ice and snow dropping on the roof below. In more detail... We only had 3 people in a 4-guest room, but it was still a little tight given the need to keep 3 large suitcases in the room. The feather doonas were too hot, and there was only one option, the doona or just a sheet. The futons were also quite thin, flattened by use, and quite uncomfortable for our ageing body (early 60s). We asked at reception for additional futons, but were told "maximum of 2". So we used the 2 futons intended for the 4th person, as well as the tatami seat cushions, which all made sleeping just comfortable enough. The staff observed the usual greetings, but a little too much. It was overdone. It did feel a little uncomfortable having someone insist that they put your slippers on the slipper rack when stepping onto the tatami-floored dining room. We had to tell staff at reception which of the 3 time slots for the dinner that we wanted, which we didn't mind, but that made eating time a little inflexible: you have to commit beforehand. Booking.com says "Ski to door" on the webpage for this hotel, but there is only one way to ski to the door, along the road from the ski slope, but there are signs on the roadside saying that you are not permitted to ski on the road (down to the hotel). The music in the dining room in the morning consisted of a CD with arrangements of Ghibli songs, and in the evening, a different CD also of arrangements of Ghibli songs, both played on repeat, both played on a little portable CD player/radio on a table behind the coffee. The photo at the top of the Bookings.com page for this hotel is well done from a marketing point of view. It makes the hotel look like an old traditional ryokan, warm and appealing for its woody charm.

Good location, comfortable, friendly staff

Rooms were nice. Some of the staff (especially those working at dining) were very sweet and pleasant. A younger front desk guy was also very helpful with our Yamato delivery arrangement. They made a huge difference to our stay!

Booking issues: We had a major issue with the half-board bookings. We tried to add dinner for the private suite room by calling. Front desk replied that not only could they not accommodate adding dinner for 3 pax (“full”), but that none of our half board bookings included dinner. After multiple calls including in Japanese, they finally conceded that it was a system issue and we DID have dinner. Thankfully I also got this in writing from the hotel via the chat platform because when we checked in (months later), the front desk AGAIN told us NO dinner. It was the tone and manner of the staff that really left a bad impression both on the phone and in person! Finally we did manage to get dinner for everyone, which was so important as the village was very dead and hardly anything was open in the evening! The food: The included buffet breakfasts were almost the same everyday and the included dinners were all DIY-style cooking like shabu shabu and bbq. Vegetables were almost the same selection daily, just the meats and sauce changed. We stank of bbq daily due to others in the dining room doing bbq. Beggars can’t be choosers! Cleanliness: I found my air purifier/humidifer incredibly dusty and actually full of mold, so it gave me asthma the first night I tried to use it. Rest of the room and hotel was ok. Location: not ski-in ski-out and they didn’t provide any shuttle service to the slopes or rental shops. Many rental shops don’t allow overnight storage so logistics was a headache.