Azumaen

The hotel has a vintage feel. It is clean and providing a unique and cozy stay. The rooms provide stunning views of the lake. The hotel is designed in a traditional Japanese style. It allows guests to experience sleeping on the floor on comfortable futons. Additionally, the staff will provide excellent service and tea while you wait to check in. It will make your stay even more enjoyable.

Enjoyed my stay with my family. The food was amazing and creatively done up by the chef. Moe, the waitress at the restaurant was very attentive to details - she knows my dad doesn’t eat beef and ensured his portions had no beef in it. Rooms were clean and sunsets were gorgeous! Thank you

Very very bad experience in Azumaen. Very poor hygiene, there were cockroaches in the bathrobe. Serious discrimination against non-Japanese guests, dinner has three dishes less than Japanese guests. After checking in, we were going to the hot spring in hotel first. My husband put on the bathrobe and shouted that there were cockroaches. After taking off the bathrobe, we found a large dead cockroach stuck in the bathrobe. We felt very sick and immediately called the waitress to come up. When the waitress saw the cockroach, she called the front desk and then asked us to move to a room at the end of the corridor. The air conditioner in the room blew a foul smell from time to time, which made us worrying about the hygiene of the guest room. We worried about the recurrence of cockroaches or mice, and we did not sleep well all night. No more and further apologise for the cockroach incident. As we booked one accommodation with dinner and breakfast, we went to the restaurant for dinner. We were given an English menu, which was a very simple dish. This is the least and simplest dinner in twenty times I stayed in a Japanese hot spring hotel. Later, we found that the dishes served for the Japanese guests at the other tables were different from ours, and there were at least three dishes more than ours. As I have seen the comment from other Chinese guest on Trip.com before which complained the hotel only provided English menus and refused to offer menu in Japanese. I took a photo of the Japanese menu on the next table and found that the Japanese menu for Japanese guests is different from our English menu. Then I checked the hotel official website: the lowest price for one night accommodation with dinner and breakfast was the same as the Japanese menu which I took picture. The dinner pictures shown on the official website were a few more than ours, which is the same as the Japanese guests we saw. It is obviously that Azumaen discriminated against Non-Japanese guests and reduced dinner dishes without authorisation. In addition, we arrived at the Azumaen after 2 p.m. We wanted to deposit our luggage at the hotel and then go to the scenic spots in Hot Spring Town. The automatic door of the hotel was closed. The paper stuck on the door said that check-in began at 3 p.m. We entered through the small glass door next to the gate, and the lights in the lobby were turned off. After a while, a middle-aged female waitress with glasses came out with an unhappy face. She checked our passports and said that we could only check in at 4 p.m. Originally, it didn't matter whether to check in at 3 or 4 o'clock as we planned to visit the hot spring town first, but her attitude made us very uncomfortable. It was very rude and discriminatory that she drove us out of the hotel.

Top-quality customer service started before I even booked. I was trying to use their online reservation system to select a meal plan that wasn't available on western booking sites but needed a workaround since I didn't have a Japanese phone number or address. They had a translator call me on a 13-hour time difference to figure it out. The standard rooms are spacious and overlook a small lake. We were surprised to find a deep, full-sized bathtub in the room, so even if you don't want to go to the public bath you can still give yourself a good soak. The placement of the power outlets was the one annoyance. Public bath was the right temperature for me. The outdoor bath faces the lake but it was dark and cloudy and I can't really see without my glasses anyway. Spacious bathing area, too, with lots of shower stalls. Food was also great. They really put effort into the presentation and while none of the courses were themselves filling, it all adds up. There's various vegetable and sashimi appetizers, soup and sushi, a main dish of some kind, more soup and sushi... They showcase regional seafood well. It's about a five minute walk from the nearest bus stop and around ten from the main Unzen Onsen stop and the sightseeing spots, but you can arrange for a 2-3 minute shuttle ride if you need it.

I stayed in the Dec 2022, 3mths after Japan has reopened it's border to travellers. The room I stayed was 水円 Suien, which has a semi-outdoor onsen bath (which really means indoors with large window). The room is spacious and very comfortable, with great view of the lake outside. Onsen in room is nice and hot, but it was not filled so we had to fill it ourselves once we're in, and the shower in the onsen room was not working, so we had to wash in the seperate (big) bathroom and move to the onsen. Not a big deal. Everything is very clean. Heating in the room was more than sufficient when it was sub-zero outside. Didn't try the public bath because Japan was still newly opened at the time and we wanted to be considerate so we stayed in our room. We ate both meals in restaurant "on the lake". Sashimi was fresh and the chef has performed sushi making (?) on tableside which was nice and entertaining. Love the miso dip veggie. The restaurant has a great view of the lake as well. Service was excellent. I could definately feel they were short-staffed at the time but everyone was trying their best and you can feel that clearly. The young woman that helped us check-in and check-out was in particular amazing. I do speak some Japanese and many staff did tell me their English is not the best, but with their great attitude, i'm sure there will be no problem with some help of a translation app and some gesturing. The hotel is a bit off the main tourist area where the shops and Unzen Jigoku is. It's a 10 min walk on a mostly flat path with some gentle slopes.

Highly recommended this hotel! The onsen was great. The traditional tatami room was spacious and clean overlooking the lake. We stayed for a night with dinner and breakfast. The restaurant is newly renovated with modern looking. The fusion dinner and breakfast were magnificent and excellent. Service as well as English communication were great with the staffs.

We stayed two nights in the western style room. It did not have the lake view as promised, instead we could see the parking lot from our room. The room itself was clean and tidy. Free fresh green tea is provided, although there was no water cooler, only hot water available. The bathroom was chilly and the water temperature of the shower was a bit low. The staff did not speak English at all and the breakfast was ridiculously expensive (27000 yen pp).|The private onsen is accessible free of charge to hotel guests and it is amazing. The view is great (lake view) and the baths are very nice. I went in twice and I had the sauna, indoor baths and outdoor bath all for myself. I would recommend going to this onsen.

We stayed in rooms 312 and 313 at the far end of the corridor. It's a very looooong walk, from the lobby. The rooms are huge and gorgeous. They have a full sized fridge but, it's stocked with their drinks. It's not easy to keep your own drinks in it. You have a choice of sleeping on beds or on Japanese futons. The beds are comfy. There's a sitting room where you can relax on a leather sofa and enjoy the lake view. They even have 2 toilets in the room (Japanese style and Western style). The lake view is superb. The pot of hot water becomes warm quite soon and you can't reheat it ... which doesn't make for a good cup of tea, in the morning ... you'd think with such luxury they could afford to use such hot water dispensers.||The hotel itself is gorgeous and slightly gaudy - a lot of gold, reminiscent of the Bubble Era ... so, it's expensive! ||Our Nakai-san wasn't very helpful and certainly didn't seem to enjoy her work, very much. Having to get me a larger size of yukata seemed a lot of hassle - it's a long walk?!? She forgot to tell us that bus loads of guests were coming in ... so, we should go to the public bath, early ... she apologized for not telling us this information, during dinner - why even bother?!?||And the walk ... hike from our room to the public bath literally took 10 minutes, from one end to the other of the hotel. The bath was a big let down ... as the murky brown onsen spring water was actually dirty (i.e. hair floating in it and slimy on the bottom) and just lukewarm. We often visit the onsen bath 3-4 times during a stay, at any onsen - but, this time we only went once! That was enough ...||At night, we had to go to a big room with no view, no atmosphere and no music to eat dinner, with only the sound of lights glowing. Many times we sat waiting for the next dish to come out - it took forever. The service was terrible. Worse still, the taste of the food was TERRiBLE! Everything was cold, hard and not fresh ... even the rice was dry. I thought we were the only ones complaining about the food, but the family that came in after us, also complained about the same things. The staff seem to just shrug it off ... par for the course, I assume. Breakfast was only slightly better.||If you go to Azumaen ... we'd seriously recommend eating outside ...