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I found this place online & found out Yoko Ono & John Lennon stayed here many years ago. Its a retreat in Yunohana which is a picturesque train ride through the mountains of Kyoto. When I arrived they greeted me at the courtesy bus & escorted me to there Library with tea to relax. WOW! this place is built by a beautiful stream & surrounded by mountains. Although by a roadside you can barley hear anything. This is mostly enjoyed by wealthy Japanese however they embraced me lovingly.
I was shown to the baths which were segregated & heavenly. Huge boulders surround a hot water bath as you look at a green, leafy stone wall outside.
I had a treatment with Sarah, my therapist, & then the most incredible lunch with courses then seemed to never end in the restaurant.
I had the Spa 30 minutes & Lunch Package with Onsen only 9000Yen! Also booked the private onsen seperately which is high in the woods, surrounded by bamboo & also spectacular.
Although I came in winter with very little greenery I can easily see how spectacular this place would be in Spring.
This is definitely worth the trip & the highlight of my time in Kyoto!
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Date of stay: February 2013
Value
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Location
Cleanliness
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Sleep Quality
Trip type: Travelled solo
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
While located one hour from Kyoto, transportation was not issue for issue for us Besides this excellent room, fantastic service, great kaiseki meals that can be served in your room or you can enjoy it in nice restaurant on first floor. We also used both public bath and private onsen, both very great experience. Overall excellent time
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Date of stay: March 2015Trip type: Travelled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
We spent one night here in order to rejuvenate following intensive sightseeing in Tokyo. We had a traditional Japanese room that was large, clean and well designed, with a functional attached bathroom. Well, we assume it was functional, as we only used the toilet; we spent most of our waking time in the communal baths (onsen). This was our first onsen experience, and we really enjoyed it, although it's worth doing research in order to know a bit about the dos and don'ts of such a place. We went to the communal onsen prior to dinner, then after the excellent keiseki dinner served in the dining room we went to the private outdoor onsen. It was a magical experience to bathe outside, in the dark in November! We had time for one more trip to the communal onsen after breakfast, before leaving this charming place.
Service was friendly and courteous, the decor was charming, and we could really understand why John Lennon and Yoko Ono stayed there. We would definitely go back if we were in the area again.
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Date of stay: November 2013
Value
Rooms
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
Trip type: Travelled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
We stayed in the Honami room on the 12th of April 2017.
The following texts in “xxx” are notes I took on the night of my stay to help me not miss any important points in my review.
“So I am typing this up in the ryokan during the night of our stay (after dinner). So far, we are disappointed, to say the least.
Let's wind back time a bit to give you a bit of background of our stay.
We were staying at Gion, Kyoto for 2 nights prior, in a fabulous ryokan (check out my other review). We checked out from the Gion ryokan earlier today and were very sad to leave. Caught the JR line to Kameoka Station as advised on the Sumiya website. Train was packed until we reach the start of the Romance (or sightseeing) train line. Once we got to Kameoka Station, we started to feel hungry and decided, let's go to Sumiya 1st and find something to eat around there. We took the taxi as advised on the ryokan’s website. We arrived at the property and went into the lobby. We tried out luck to check in even though it was only 12.30pm (check in time is at 3pm). They told us the rooms are not ready yet, which we totally understand. We asked them whether there were anything close by that we can kill some time with or some good eateries nearby. The front desk said nothing much around. He didn't offer any suggestions or invite us to the on property restaurant. We went outside the property and looked up Google. Everything was a few miles away. We went back in and ask them whether they serve lunch. The lady said she will find out and get back to me. She later invited and escorted us to the dining place down 1 level from the lobby. We ordered lunch. My wild boar rice was good. Wife's tempura udon was lack lustre. We finished lunch and went back to lobby. They offered us tea. After 15 or so minutes, they invited us to the library area to wait (They told us it was a nicer area to wait in). They reminded us Wifi is free and can be used.
The room was ready at 2pm. We checked in and were escorted to our room.”
We were told that this is the largest room on the property. Our room was indeed massive. The front door opens to a large typical Japanese foyer, where you remove your shoes. Then it either opens to the main dining area (centre of the room) or to the side – a Japanese living room (There is a restroom next to it). Next to the living room facing the windows/view was the hotspring/onsen bath for legs only. It was intended that you can sit here relaxing your legs in hotspring water while admiring the view. On the other side of the dining area was our room, a second restroom and the onsen bath and shower area.
We also paid an additional 3240 yen for a 45-minute private use of their “secret open air onsen”. Consistent with other reviews already here, we had to walk around 10 minutes on an outdoor trail to the secret onsen. Fortunately, compared to other reviews, we had booked our session to be around 4/5pm so there was still daylight. The outdoor onsen was not bad, we had the place to ourselves. The onsen water was a bit too warm for us so we could not stay too long in the water. When we got out of the water and got dressed, we were nice and toasty (it was rather chilly before getting into the water). We lazed around on the lounge chairs for a while (as we still had left over time) before making our way back to the main building.
The air-conditioning in our room was not customisable. We read the room info in the form of a leaflet that we were not to change the operating modes but we had to switch it from the heating cycle to the fan cycle as it was too warm for us. Ideally we would have liked a cooling cycle but the a/c unit doesn’t allow us to do so. So it was a warm night and we had to open up the windows to cool our rooms.
We did not have a great night’s sleep. We had breakfast early and left early (before 9pm) to catch the train to Tokyo.
At that moment in time, we were very disappointed with the stay. We couldn’t wait to leave.
Now, after a few weeks, I have calmed down a bit and am trying to be a bit more objective.
Our main bug bear is: From the website, we had imagined that the place would be nice and quiet, secluded, peaceful. Photos on the website, intentionally or unintentionally, misled us to believe this. Or you could say that we were naïve and did not look up Google maps or read the bad reviews more carefully on Tripadvisor, for example. The property was alongside a busy motorway/highway. View from the room was this motorway. Not a very peaceful, scenic or relaxing image.
Same with the private onsen. Pictures on their website look wonderful. I will give them a bit of slack on it being the start of spring but yeah not relaxing or scenic at all. Being near the motorway did not help.
I suppose we had very high expectation coming to this property. We had a superb stay at the Gion ryokan (best in our lives) so that set the bar unreasonably high. We paid 20-25% more for our stay at Sumiya (I understand it is a very very large room) compared to the previous ryokan. So we were expecting somewhat 70-80% of the satisfaction of our previous night’s stay at the Gion ryokan. All these factors led us to be utterly disappointed.
If you only speak English, good luck. One person at the front desk speak some English. One person at the restaurant understood English. The rest of the staff during our stay were struggling to communicate in English. I do admit, we have no right to expect everyone to understand English when we travel to a foreign country so it is not entirely their fault. We speak no Japanese and speak some Mandarin. So fortunately there was a staff that spoke Mandarin, who was allocated to serve us on the 1st day.
All in all it was an average stay but we had high expectations partly because of the previous stay and the high price. Biggest no no for us was the location next to the highway. If you want a peaceful a quiet stay in a ryokan with onsen, my personal 2 cents is to try somewhere else.
Note: This is in no way a finger pointing review, which says the property is at fault and we had no responsibility in our disappointment. It is just a review and our personal opinion. We may have visited not at the best time or state of mind. Just thought some of the points would be helpful for others in making the choice of staying.
The property offers a day visit to use their onsen too. That may have been a better choice for us.
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Date of stay: April 2017
Value
Cleanliness
Service
Trip type: Travelled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
The reception and the personal was very nice but the building on his whole is quite aging (the pictures on their website show nothing of this). The building is also surrounded by two roads and an abrupt hill which makes the view from the rooms very limited. And last but not least, the outdoor women onsen are not enough protected from potential voyeurs: as I was getting out of the bath, I noticed two guys looking at me through the bamboo fence (I was naked as is customary). This is truly scandalous. It was the first time I spent so much money for a bedroom and I've rarely been so disapointed. I do not recommend this establishment at all.
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Date of stay: August 2015
Value
Location
Service
Trip type: Travelled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
While we did not stay at this Ryokan, the Kaiseki dinner and the onsen (hot spring bath) experience was ABSOLUTELY SUPERLATIVE.
For non-Japanese the public bath experience can be intimidating, so the private hot-bath experience in the open-air natural pool environment helped ease the fears. Fortunately, it was cold evening, so the hot bath was an ethereal experience.
The Kaiseki dinner made a big dent in the pocket, but was worth every penny of the Y20K+ spent on it. The table setting was overlooking a tastefully lit gentle stream, with well-placed seperations that made us feel, we were the only ones in the restaurant.
The NINE course meal was delectable and a fantastic gastronomic experience. Every dish was garnished beautiful and the taste of each was unique and even more wonderful. Not just the taste, the colors, the serving dishes, the texture, everything seemed perfect. The waiteress was knowledgeable and helped us understand the details of each ingredient that we inquisitively asked her. A full Kaiseki cuisine is a must-have to understand why Japanese cuisine today stands on it own.
Thanks Chika for such a wonderful unforgettable experience.
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Date of stay: May 2012
Value
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Trip type: Travelled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
The best part of our stay was enjoying the private outdoor hotspring. It’s worth the extra cost and advanced booking.
The pros: the staff was friendly and helpful. We appreciate the fact they arranged for English-speaking staff to assist us. They also brought us a heater when we noted that the shower area in the room was cold.
The hotspring tub in the room was nice and big.
The cons: The inn is close by a highway. One can see cars fleeting by from the dining area and the wine bar/cafe.
The Western room with private outdoor hotspring bath that we booked was small for the price. The easy chair facing the green view is in the bathroom. The room is very basic. No elegant decorations like in other ryokans.
The tiny pantry for making tea is next to the toilet.
There is no choice of yukatas. Both male and female have the same ones. We were never asked about size selections either. The coat over the yukata was thin. In some other ryokans we have stayed in there were thicker coats provided.
The whole place other than the room was chilly. There seemed to be no heating at all.
The Sukiyaki dinner we chose was good but not fantastic. They do give you lots of food though. Breakfast was half- buffet style. Very basic, nothing impressive.
It’s ok overall but we will not return. We stayed at Suizen and liked it much better.
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Date of stay: April 2019
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
One of my mom's top priorities for her visit to Japan was to soak in an outdoor bath, and I was able to fulfill her dream by reserving Sumiya Kihoan's private outdoor bath called "Yama no Kakure-yu." You can reserve the private bath WITHOUT reserving an overnight stay at the ryokan (Japanese-style inn), which gave us a great day trip experience.The outdoor bath, Yama no Kakure-yu, was beautiful and well-maintained, the lunch was delicious, and overall the service of the staff was great, if at times a bit formal.
Reserving a 45-minute time slot for Yama no Kakure-yu for two people came out to 8,000 yen per person (a total of 16,000 yen + tax), which I found to be a decent deal considering that it comes with a true ryokan meal for lunch, as well as a a free pick-up and drop off shuttle service from JR Kameoka Station. The only reason I'm not giving a full 5/5 is because that the 45-minute time slot for your onsen experience is a bit misleading. By the time you receive the key for the Yama no Kakure-yu and make your way out there (about a 5 minute walk from the main ryokan building), you're only left with closer to 35 minutes to actually soak and enjoy the private onsen. Also, if you're TRULY looking to escape all signs of modernity, you may be disappointed that Sumiya Kihoan is located next to a main road, which you can see along your walk to the private bath. That being said, the atmosphere once we were in the fenced-in private bath was great, and we were truly able to relax!
One final word of caution - if you are not familiar with the ryokan meals, be aware that these meals take TIME. Up to two hours is normal, because each course comes out one at a time, and there are many, many (small) courses leading up to the main course, which is then followed by dessert. Still, if you haven't experienced a ryokan meal, you definitely should give it a shot. I thoroughly enjoyed every dish that Sumiya Kihoan served for lunch. I thought the flavor and quality was great, especially considering the price for the entire day! If you're curious, for the main course I had a great wild boar meat dish, and my mom had pork nabe (hotpot). I'd really love to have that boar dish again! My mouth waters just thinking about it.
In conclusion, if you're looking for a private outdoor bath experience in the Kyoto area, Sumiya Kihoan is a short train ride away from Kyoto, and is very reasonably priced for the full experience that you get. I'd definitely come back to do this again.
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Date of stay: March 2016
Value
Service
Trip type: Travelled with family
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Great service and lovely environment. Gives you the full experience of living in Japanese-cultured style housing. We had Japanese course menu served in our own rooms. Menu was great with wonderful selection of sushi, sashimi, tempura, and suki. Lobley desserts. Nice souvenir shop that also sells local delicacies. You can also arrange for a private hot bath - 2-3 minute walk from your room and have to pay an extra 3000 yen or so for 45 minutes. Overall we really enjoyed the experience.
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Date of stay: March 2015
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Wonderful, peaceful experience at this Ryokan. Easy to get to and facilities were well maintained. The private Onsen was a memorable experience - try to do it at dusk! The 7 course dinner was a delightful experience even catering for 6 year olds! Amazing service all round especially from Mizuki for the dinner service in our room. Highly recommended for family.
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Date of stay: April 2019Trip type: Travelled with family
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Dear our guest, thank you for your inquiry.
In the package of half board, it includes dinner and
breakfast.
If you stay here with the package of breakfast only or
Room only, you will be able to order breakfast as 3,000
JPY.(excludes taxes) per person.
Our breakfast is Japanese style, please require us
if you would like to have western style breakfast
in advance.
We look forward to seeing you.
Yours sincerely,
Sumiya Kiho-an
Dear our guest, thank you for your inquiry.
For some of Yama no Iori rooms, the guest are able to smoke in the room,despite of the request to make the room in No smoking and smells.
Please require us before you check-in.
Yours sincerely,
Sumiya Kiho-an
There are more places to choose from in the Kameoka area.
PRICE RANGE
£257 - £302 (Based on Average Rates for a Standard Room)
LOCATION
JapanKinkiKyoto PrefectureKameokaYunohana Onsen
NUMBER OF ROOMS
27
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