Ochiairo Murakami

Ochiairo Murakami

In the wooded middle of the Izu Peninsula, an hour from Tokyo to Mishima by shinkansen and then a drive into the Amagi mountains, the Hondani and Nekko rivers meet to form the Kano, and on that bank stands Ochiairo, named by Yamaoka Tesshu, the man remembered for negotiating Edo’s bloodless surrender, after the simple fact of the rivers coming together. The inn was founded in 1874, and the present wooden buildings went up in 1932, in the slump after the Showa financial crisis, partly as a way for the founder to give Izu’s craftsmen work. Seven buildings, the tiled entrance hall among them, are registered National Tangible Cultural Properties, and there are just 14 rooms on 3,500 tsubo (nearly three acres) of grounds under Mount Amagi, every one facing the garden. The old name, Ochiairo Murakami, belongs to Norio Murakami, who ran the inn for sixteen years with his wife as okami until the 2019 renovation, when Plan Do See, the Tokyo group behind hotels and restaurants in Japan and abroad, oversaw a redesign that kept the history and the borrowed landscape and modernised the rooms and public spaces. Rooms are classical, tatami floors, low furniture, an onsen bath and a view of the garden, and dinner is a nine-course kaiseki of local produce served in semi-private or private dining rooms facing the garden, with venison and wild boar from Amagi in season and a long list of local wine and sake. The rate covers the round-trip transfer from Shuzenji station, drinks at dinner, the lounge and the in-room minibar, and the lounge pours freshly ground coffee, wine and local beer. The architecture repays attention: the 108-mat Shitan room has pillars of rare Taiwanese rosewood, and a serving-wing staircase crosses in an X so staff and guests never met, under a ceiling of Yakusugi cedar. The baths are the other reason to come, a riverside rotenburo and a cave bath walled in rock, and a sauna programme taken seriously: a tea-room sauna by Dai Matsuo, the professional sauna enthusiast, added in 2019, and a Tengu sauna beside the cave bath in 2020, both ranked in the Saunachelin list, the first entered through a crawl-through tea-house door, the second fed with onsen water poured over the stones. The rhythm is arrival at three, then bath, sauna, lounge, kaiseki, sleep, and bath again at dawn, the sound of two rivers underneath all of it. Michelin, which gives it a Key, notes that it attempts no gimmicks and no reinvention, only a warm, well-run version of the rural ryokan, and that is fair. The renovation has made it more comfortable than faded, not the hushed patina of an old Kyoto inn, but the bones are intact and the setting does most of the work. Staff skew young and include foreign hires who seem to enjoy the job, and there is a games room with air hockey, table football and table tennis, a manga room, and a suspension bridge and swing in the grounds, so families are part of the mix, and the Shitan room is used for weddings and celebrations. You should not come if you want adults-only silence, a destination restaurant in the Kyoto mode, or a sea view, since the coast is a drive away and this is a river-and-forest stay. You should come for a registered piece of Showa-era carpentry, some of the best sauna-and-onsen bathing in Izu, Amagi game in winter, and an all-inclusive rate that lets you stop thinking about anything but the next bath. The short version: A 14-room ryokan founded in 1874 at the meeting of two rivers in central Izu, its 1932 buildings registered as cultural properties, redesigned in 2019, with riverside and cave baths, Saunachelin-ranked saunas and an all-inclusive rate.