Ryokan vs Western Style Hotel
 

Hi,
We'll be arriving in Tokyo in the evening. We've never been to Asia before. We're from the U.S. We've never had to deal with 12 hour jet lag before. Any opinions on whether a ryokan may be too much culture shock under these circumstances?

The places you mention in your other post about tatami cater to foreigners, so anything you might not understand would be well explained to you. They don't care about whether you are there in time for dinner either, and meals are optional, unlike ryokan.

Neither place would require you to know any of the intricacies of staying in a ryokan...they are more pension style that happen to have tatami rooms and use the name ryokan. Staying there you will get a small taste of what a ryokan could be. In addition, Sadachiyo seems to offer some cultural courses which would be nice to participate in.

Jet lag...highly individual and trip specific. We've made the trip between the US east coast and Japan more times than I care to count...and every time the jet lag is different. The only consistency seems to be for the first few days back in Japan, we're all awake around 4:00 am regardless of the time we went to sleep the night before and how much sleep we've actually had. Once it took me a month to adjust to the time change, once it didn't take more than a couple of days.

Play it safe and plan sightseeing and activities in the morning and leave the late afternoon/evening for relaxing, a nap even. You might find you skip dinner even...we usually do for the first few days just because we aren't hungry at dinner time.

I am a Taiwanese, arrive Japan on 9/12 and leave on 9/20. Since I will travel along, I am looking for companions to join with me. I have been to Japan many times so I can speak Japanese fluently. I don’t have solid itinerary at this moment because I like to jump on train and stop by any place I like it. The hotel booking is quite easily. Most of JR station has travel and hotel booking information counter. I usually book hotels there. Or I can get the local hotel organization at the train station to book through the organization.
If you are interesting, pls contact me.

We've just returned from a three week stay in Japan and used ryokans almost exclusively. Some were most luxurious and some were very spartan. However, I did reserve the first two nights at an American style hotel in Narita (vicinity of airport)where we could use the swimming pool and spa facilities and sort of rest up. It was a nice start to the vacation.

What are the names of the ryokan where you stayed--and opinions of them, please?

Many years ago, I was travelling from the States to Malaysia by way of Okinawa. I took a communter flight from Okinawa to Osaka and thence to Kyoto. I checked at the train station, and stayed exclusively at ryokans for the next for days.

The experience was magical, people could nothave been nicer despite minimal amounts of English.

Moral was... keep an open mind, be observent as to what others do, and wonderful things will happen!!!

I still long to return.