Two Day Onsen Escape from Tokyo to Shima Onsen
Feb 17th, 2013, 09:40 PM
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Two Day Onsen Escape from Tokyo to Shima Onsen
Last May my wife and I spent two weeks in Tokyo. During that time we attended Design Festa at Tokyo Big Sight, stayed in three hotels in different areas Shinagawa (close to Odaiba) Hearton Hotel, Shibuya Granbel Hotel, and Akihabara Washington Hotel.
Thanks to the help of contributors to this forum we kept our days full exploring different areas of the city as well as a trip to Kawagoe, a Thai festival in Yoyogi Park, Yanaka, Nippori Fabric Town, Meguro Temple Walk, Asakusa Matsuri, various museums, parks,stores and restaurants too numerous to mention in this post.
Next trip I will try to take better notes.
Needless to say Tokyo is an exciting city and there is still much there we would like to see.
One aspect of the trip that may be of some use to forum readers is the two day trip to Shima Onsen we took to add a brief ryokan onsen stay to our urban trip.
I found this Ryokan on the now defunct "Quirky Japan web site via internet archiver while looking for small Tokyo Museums.
They have a Facebook page as well as a good english web page.
They offered an all inclusive bus transport, dinner breakfast package which totaled
66,400 yen (Bus Transport, Service charge included, Consumption tax included).
We booked May 16/17 (Wed-Thu) and sent our bags to our next Tokyo hotel via takkyubin, packed our day packs and headed off to Yeasu Street near Tokyo Station to catch the bus for the 3.5 hr ride to Shima Onsen.
Really glad we did as it was the perfect complement to a urban stay.
The staff were very friendly and accommodating. The Ryokan was clean and well decorated and being mid week not crowed at all which made using the three private baths very easy. Also the town has public baths available for free and a low cost bath up at the head of the valley at a dam site. Good local hiking and nature trails.
Great food service and nice surroundings made this a wonderful stay I'd recommend to anyone wanting a quick Tokyo get away in a less crowded and well known onsen town.
I've put together a photo album of the stay on flicker.
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjDMKGCp
Thanks to the help of contributors to this forum we kept our days full exploring different areas of the city as well as a trip to Kawagoe, a Thai festival in Yoyogi Park, Yanaka, Nippori Fabric Town, Meguro Temple Walk, Asakusa Matsuri, various museums, parks,stores and restaurants too numerous to mention in this post.
Next trip I will try to take better notes.
Needless to say Tokyo is an exciting city and there is still much there we would like to see.
One aspect of the trip that may be of some use to forum readers is the two day trip to Shima Onsen we took to add a brief ryokan onsen stay to our urban trip.
I found this Ryokan on the now defunct "Quirky Japan web site via internet archiver while looking for small Tokyo Museums.
They have a Facebook page as well as a good english web page.
They offered an all inclusive bus transport, dinner breakfast package which totaled
66,400 yen (Bus Transport, Service charge included, Consumption tax included).
We booked May 16/17 (Wed-Thu) and sent our bags to our next Tokyo hotel via takkyubin, packed our day packs and headed off to Yeasu Street near Tokyo Station to catch the bus for the 3.5 hr ride to Shima Onsen.
Really glad we did as it was the perfect complement to a urban stay.
The staff were very friendly and accommodating. The Ryokan was clean and well decorated and being mid week not crowed at all which made using the three private baths very easy. Also the town has public baths available for free and a low cost bath up at the head of the valley at a dam site. Good local hiking and nature trails.
Great food service and nice surroundings made this a wonderful stay I'd recommend to anyone wanting a quick Tokyo get away in a less crowded and well known onsen town.
I've put together a photo album of the stay on flicker.
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjDMKGCp
Feb 20th, 2013, 04:28 PM
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You guys went "local" with the backpacks and the bus, perfect. I love the Gunma area and the mountains. Shima looks like the typical small onsen town and it looks like you had a good time. Mahalo for sharing.
Aloha!
Aloha!
