Name: Hotel Ryuo
Address: 11700-220, Yomase, Yamanouchimachi, Yamanouchi, Yamanouchi, Yamanouchi, 381-0405, Japan
Rating: 4

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Hotel Ryuo

Yamanouchi

If you want accommodation on the slopes at a reasonable price, this is the place. It is a six story building, dining room on ground floor. Breakfast and dinner is available. Rental is next door. Chairlift is a short distance from the front door.

The customers are mostly younger university students, not that many families. It was surprisingly quiet at night. There were not that many non Japanese customers. 

Rooms are western and Japanese. 

Heads up on your stay: Bring cash, no credit cards accepted. Expect to Ski/ snowboard a lot as there is nothing else on the slopes. Access to Hotel Ryuo is via the Ryuo Information centre, call for the tractor shuttle to take you up.

Winter Ski/Snowboard Retreat

Why did I say that? Because almost everything in this hotel is terrible. It is directly owned by the Ryuoo (pron. like Lewd-O in English, it means Dragon King) Ski Park. I was not sure if they run this hotel because they want to serve skiers or just because they can.

Good part first: The ski-out exit goes almost directly to a chairlift. Breakfast and dinner are complimentary with unlimited rice.

The rooms were very old and the flooring was quite dirty (we stayed in a Japanese style room with mats). There were insects in the futon. The communal bath (a common feature in Japanese lodging, and probably a must-do thing for Japan enthusiasts) was too small to the point that many patrons had to stand there in the bath waiting for their turns. Turns out Ryuoo "group" had another bath downhills, for 600 yen you can take a bath there too. Hmm?

The food portion both for dinner and breakfast were minimal and served on a communal basis -- there's always a nabe or something that requires the whole room to be present to eat, causing a lot of logistical trouble when there's a split in decision between going to a nighter or not. The cut-off time for dinner was also very early: they will clear the dining hall by 1900. The portable stoves they use for nabe might just refuse to light up. In my case, the dining hall lady solved the problem by taking the entire stove back into the kitchen, lit it up, and brought it (still lit) back to the table. It was amusing, but extremely dangerous.

There was no separate smoking area and it's free to smoke in the lobby, so please take note of where you sit if you have trouble with the smoke.

The heated room for storage did not have a boots locker or shelf, and therefore they must be worn all the way to the room or one must use the coin lockers. Since ski boots are not fundamentally designed for walking, I saw this gesture as nickel-and-dime.

I also wish to specifically name and shame Orion Tours for their very bad deal, including putting us in a scheduled bus that leaves from Nijo Castle (we come from Kansai area) instead of a chartered bus that we could leave from anywhere. (We were a group of 40+ skiers and boarders, known under a name of a social association.) They also did not pass our ski equipment requests to the rental shops, resulting in us taking half a day to get fitted. Ski fitting is NOT easy, and Orion just made it worse because the rental shop did not expect another tour group. As a result, my boots were badly fitted and skis too short for my height. That said, the hotel-side rental shop later replaced my ski (for a longer length) and shoes (for a better fit).

Despite the best attempts to accommodate the customers, Ryuoo performed badly at maintaining this hotel of theirs.

I was there to ski, and yeah, ski.

If your up for going to bed by 9pm then this is the place for you. Its like a sleepy country town on a ski slope. It was the quietest New Years Eve I have ever been to. I couldn't find any restaurants or bars were open after 9pm. It was a hotel room and a bottle of wine. This hotel I was in had basically no English. The hotel is stuck halfway up the ski slope, the only way to the hotel was by a caterpillar truck that picked you up from a building next to the main car park. The truck only runs for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple hours later in the afternoon. You miss it, you are walking 500m up the hill in the snow. There is nothing open at the bottom of the resort at night so your are pretty much resigned to being stuck in the hotel. You have a free breakfast included, but if you want dinner there, you have to pay for the dormitory style set up of Japanese foods.  The rooms were adequate, definitely warm enough. You can choose a room with real beds or futons. The little showers are enough to squeeze 2 people into... But they do have the onsens in the hotel which is always nice at the end of a days run.

The mountain, well we had a good view from our room. Was pretty happy with that. The position on the slope was nice and handy. The immediate ski area is decent enough for beginners, children, medium skill, or for people that want nice easy runs. But thats about it. We got to the resort in a car, not sure about public transport. Price for 2 nights including new years I thought was very good. Though there was no advice anywhere that the hotel only took cash, NO CREDIT CARD. Also the price they gave me on the invoice didn't match the price I booked for on Booking.com. I paid what I signed up for. 

If I could speak Japanese better I probably would have had an easier time dealing with the problems. It was a last minute booking so I was limited in places that were available in the whole  Nagano ski areas, so this wasn't too bad of a spot considering that. But, next time I think I will find something a bit more up beat.

Hotel Ryuo

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