Sakamotoya Hotel

Brilliant meal in private room with perfect service. Not your usual Kaiseki; shippoku includes some delicious fusion elements like sweet potato/egg sushi, cheese gratiné lobster, shrimp cake “toast”, mirin stewed pork belly, etc. Dining rooms have their own private bathrooms and the restaurant offered valet service for our car. Oh, and the entire meal is served on fine Arita porcelain 😳

We arrived by train and decided to walk the few block from the train station. This was our 3rd hotel during our 2 week tour of Japan and our only stay at a ryokan. Street shoes are left at the front door of a ryokan and I was pleasantly surprised they had sandals that fit my size 12 feet! Our reservation was prepaid with a voucher and we checked in with no problems and our room already prepared for us.||||This is a lovely, lovely hotel with lots of history and character and traditional decor with corridors and stairs leading all over and even water features and koi through the building. This being the middle of summer it was extremely hot outside yet despite it's age the hotel was a cool and pleasant relief from the heat.||||Most Japanese style rooms advertise how many sq. meter and I was anticipating a fairly small room and was more than pleasantly surprised at how large the room, suite really, actually was. We had an entry foyer with a toilet closet, two rooms one for eating/sleeping and another to store our luggage and clothing, a separate bathroom with a Japanese style soaking tub, and an enclosed porch/sitting room with a view of the garden. We either got upgraded to a larger room or I have no clue on what it is they measure and advertise.||||Dinner was superb with a lot more food than we anticipated or expected and a nice variety of traditional Japanese. Our only extra charge was for a bottle of sake.||||Being a small, family run inn we weren't sure about how late we could explore the neighborhood without possibly being locked out so we played it safe and returned about 10PM. By the time we returned our room had already been cleaned and transitioned from eating to sleeping with traditional Japanese bedding laid out for us. While different from what we are used to we did get a very sound sleep and felt quite well rested in the morning.||||Breakfast the next morning was served in a common room downstairs and we again found the portions to be more than we could eat. The hotel does have a common bathing area as well, we just opted not to use it.||||Staff speaks hardly any English, but with a few smiles and gestures they always seemed to know exactly what we needed so the language barrier was never a problem. We were able to buy passes for the trolley system right in the hotel and with a trolley stop about a block away this was the quickest and cheapest way for us to see all of the highlights of Nagasaki||||Sadly our itinerary only allowed us one night at Sakamotoya though the inn staff was gracious enough to store our luggage while we explored Nagaski the following day.

This is a very nice ryokan near the center of Nagasaki. We hade a nice large tatami room with private Japanese wood bath tub. They also have a family Japanese bath for two that can be booked for private use. Excellent and friendly/helpful service (some speak a little English) and best of all, excellent food - both traditional style dinner served in the room or in a separate room, and a very nice Japanese style breakfast (they have western breakfast as well).||Their speciality is pork belly (Buta no kaku-ni) which is a small main dich - very fatty but excellent taste. It most be famous, because they sell that dish vacuum packed in a small shop with seperate entrance. It is also a restaurant for non-hotel guests.||Highly recommendable, excellent value for money. Make sure to book including dinner, they are probably one of the best restaurants in Nagasaki.

Stayed two nights during a family trip. Good location, near the harbor and China-town. The room was very nice - spacious and Japanese picturesque. The staff also really friendly and helpful. Note: we speak Japanese, so maybe different if you speak English. The big draw-back was the food. Two meal included; breakfast and dinner, both ryokan kaiseki style. It was possible to get western style breakfast. However the meals were the least good we have ever got at a Japanese ryokan and also the fewest number of dishes. Would much has preferred to be able to exclude the meals from the room-charge.

I totally loved my stay there and am looking forward to return next year ;)||The location walking distance from Nagasaki train station and only a few streets away from the stop Dejima on the streetcar. ||Staff was great and very welcoming !||The building itself was full of charm with lot of antiques on display and felt like an oasis in the mayhem of the town. ||I was travelling on my own but had a huge room with a little sitting area attached and comprising ensuite Japanese bathroom and toilets. I enjoyed the cedar bath in my bathroom so much that i did not venture in the common bath so can not speak about it.;)||Both Japanese dinner and breakfast were served into my room and were delicious. ||I slept like a baby in the comfy futon and hit the road totally relaxed.||A definitely worth trying ryokan !

We arrived by taxi and met at the door by 2 lady members of staff, very helpful with our luggage and then we proceeded to check in, again staff helpful, although not much English spoken at all we managed to arrange evening dinner time and information regarding breakfast etc. All in good humour at our lack of English\Japanese but we got there in the end.||||Then shown to our room, which was a beautifully decorated, spacious with a view of a small garden with a tiny pagoda all perfectly arranged, this was screened off to provide privacy. The bathroom was of a good size with the USP of the wooden bath which had been filled (note this is normal water) separate toilet. Everything was spotlessly clean. We were very much looking forward to our dinner in such a lovely setting.||||We were served tea and we spent time just relaxing and reading, unpacking and setting laptops etc to charge, doing a little work. After maybe hour and half we decide to go out for a while before coming back to get ready for dinner at 7.30.||||After our very pleasant walk out we arrived back and asked for the key to our room which we were asked to take a seat in reception. Thought this rather odd and after a few minutes a member of staff informed us there was a problem with our room and unfortunately it was not our room in the first place, so you can have another one, but did apologise. Not really sure what was going on, so we followed the staff to another room. Surprise, not only at the awfulness of the room, but the fact all our belongings had been re-packed and moved into this room.||||Not happy at all, first the room was less than half the size of the first, the ceilings were low and quite claustrophobic, decoration virtually non- existent, I opened the window screen to a modern window and a view of the high rise flats directly across. You would have no privacy other than keeping the screens closed all the time. Awful, really awful.||||We told the staff we were not happy in a calm, polite but firm manner and certainly not happy that all our belongings had been moved and in the meantime personal items appearing as they had been left in the other room, along with the contents of the fridge.||||We were not going to stay in this room given the high cost of this accommodation and thought we would just leave and find somewhere else, even at this late stage. We asked if there was another room and the staff member want away but saying they were full.|||| He came back with an alternative room, this too was much smaller than the first but it had doors/windows onto a garden and was not as bland, oppressive as the other, so we agreed on this one, and after all, we had been on with this problem for almost an hour by then.|||| However, there was a reason this room was not occupied as we found out, it was next to the kitchen and the extractor which all you could hear was a constant buzz until 11pm and again started before dawn (which with all the discussion amongst us as there were 3 staff in then room with us we could not hear at first) and the comings and goings of staff. So not a great nights sleep either.||||We had booked dinner and were looking forward to it but all this had really put a dampener on our stay, so really even if the food had been spectacular (it was not) I would not have enjoyed it. It was a spoiled night and really wish we had gone out. Breakfast the next morning in the dining room was ok nothing special.||||By the way the bath well is just a wooden bath, nothing special at all, but it was immaculately clean.||||Upon leaving we were given a generous discount which I think was fair, but I really was still not happy about our personal belongings being packed up and moved without our permission or ourselves being there. Not a trust factor but items such as laptops other electrical items being disconnected and clothes, toiletries, and more personal items being handled by strangers.||||But I must say the staff who served dinner, and the ladies who made up our room were most pleasant and friendly. ||||The rating of poor reflects how we felt as guests being effectively 'evicted' from our room and given inferior accommodation

You will need to speak some Japanese or at least be armed with a decent phrase book, but this place is totally worth it. The staff bend over backwards for you; putting on a full dinner and breakfast service in an intimate setting, setting up and packing away your futon while you're off eating, running you a bath, and even googling some maps of nearby jazz clubs if you happen to mention you're into that sort of thing. A real window into the true identity of outstanding Japanese culture and hospitality.

Spent 3 nights here in Oct 2014. ||Nice traditional ryokan right smack in the middle of Nagasaki - within walking distance of almost every sight except the Peace Park and Mt Inasa.||Impeccable, helpful service, clean as a whistle.||Really can't ask for much more, except that I wished the ceiling beams were higher so I didn't have to duck, but that's hardly their fault!

Outstanding ryokan experience. Only complaint that I have is the location - middle of the urban area kinda kills the mood. But it's just a "First World Problem". It is accessible via public transportations. And once you go inside, you forget that you are in the urban area. We were greeted by staffs in Kimono. Their outfit was beautiful and most importantly they are super polite and assistive. Everything inside is traditional and very well maintained. I particularly love the hallway that is a little bridge and artificial creek underneath. All rooms are tatami rooms which might make you worry that you won't sleep well, but the futon was pretty comfortable and I had good night sleep. And the food was amazing. It was solid authentic Kaiseki cuisine. Each dish may look small and makes you worry if you'd have enough. But believe me. It will be enough after finishing them all. Although they are keeping them real(traditional), they do equip with western style toilet. So, fear not. They do have shower but I do recommend dipping in the hot tub. Paid ¥37000 for one night for two of us. But considering the quality of food, service and the facility, this is really reasonable. If you are in Nagasaki and looking for quintessential ryokan experience, this place is it.