Ryokans in Zao Onsen

A friend and I stayed there during one week-end. It was a very good experience. The room is quite large and very clean. The highlight of this stay was for sure the dinner. The food was delicious, made with high quality products and with a large selection of different dishes. The owners were very nice with us. If you want to have an experience in a traditionnal family owned ryokan, I highly recommend to stay there :) It is exactly the kind of place that I hope will still exist in some years!

Our stay at Takamiya Ryokan Miyamaso was one of our highlights of our honeymoon! The hotel is insanely charming and very well kept. You can see it's an old building but it doesn't look old or worn down. The staff are friendly and polite, and greet you by the door when you arrive and leave the hotel. They were also very accomodating to us when we asked to keep out futons out, as we wanted to take a nap during the day. Dinner and breakfast was amazing and a lovely experience, it was delicious and presented nicely and staff was attentive and friendly. Our suite was amazing, and we loved having our own private bath outside on a balcony overlooking a snowy hill.

Very beautiful onsen. Mix bath and private onsen

We had an excellent stay, food and presentations were exquisite. We admired the thought that went into presenting food in dishes that are compatible with the “mood” of the food. Only 5 minutes walk to the lift. Staff were professional, rooms were comfortable and clean. We really enjoyed our stay.

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay. Having stayed at Zao Onsen thirty years ago when I worked in Japan, I wanted to share the Zao Onsen experience with my husband, and chose this hotel on the basis of the photos and reviews on Booking.com. On arrival, it all seemed very familiar. After experiencing the onsen bath, and the location of our room, I'm quite sure I had chosen the same hotel where I stayed back then! Obviously it has been quite recently refurbished, but there are some parts that don't change so much. We opted to have dinner at the hotel, which was excellent. Due to some confusion about exactly where the Z90 bus for Zao Onsen left Yamagata city,we missed the bus we wanted to take, so arrived around 6.45pm. (According to Google Maps, we could catch the Z90 from a stop about 50 yards from our previous hotel, but the reception staff there insisted we had to go to Yamagata station... so we missed the bus by one minute. After an hour and a half wait for the next one, the first stop after Yamagata station was, yes, you guessed it, 50 yards from our previous hotel!) As dinner is set out with fresh ingredients to be cooked at your table, you can't be later than 7pm. There is a shuttle bus from the hotel to Zao bus termius, but we didn't know about it, so walked to the hotel. Unfortunately, the short cut route we had planned was closed due to road works, so it was a much longer, and steeper, walk. The next morning, we got the shuttle bus to the bus terminus to return to Yamagata city. The onsen is really wonderful. Zao has a very special PH balance to the water. The bath at this onsen is superb.

You get well beyond what you paid for, comfortable bedding and pillow. Owner was super helpful and friendly.

The hospitality and service provided by the staff - they sent us to the bus station when needed, allowed us to use the bath after coming from an overnight bus, and changed our rooms when the heater wasn't working.

Nice traditional Japanese ryokan. Spacious room, nice and helpful staff, mountain view, and great location in Zao onsen. The downside is the hotel is so great we don’t want to go out and explore the town.

Beautiful rooms and facilities with very helpful staff

The food, the service everything. Room is tidy and neat. Nice and responsive staff