HOSHINOYA Karuizawa

Hoshino Resorts' flagship: a car-free village of rooms around a river, with no TVs, a light-and-dark Meditation Bath and seasonal Shinshu kaiseki — deeply restful, but meals cost extra and value is the sore point

HOSHINOYA Karuizawa is where Hoshino Resorts began: the family's hot-spring inn of 1914 was rebuilt in 2005 as the first Hoshinoya, a 'village in a valley' of 77 rooms set along terraced water channels. Staff drive you to your room in a small EV, rooms have no TV and are warmed by geothermal floor heating, and only guests and staff are allowed inside. Japanese guests praise the stillness — 'quiet rooms' and 'a calm atmosphere' are among the most-tagged comments on one review map, where it scores 4.24 across 83 reviews — as well as the river-side Mizunami rooms, the Meditation Bath with its 'room of light' and 'room of darkness', and seasonal kaiseki at the Kasuke restaurant (a 2024 guest's first matsutake of the year; a 2026 guest's venison fried in cherry leaves). Free drinks at the library and terrace lounges add to the ease. The recurring doubt is price: rooms are sold without meals by default, dinner at Kasuke is ¥21,780 per adult, and bloggers' bills run from ¥177,016 for two nights room-only (a family of four) to about ¥250,000 for one night for two with meals. Several reviewers call the value poor or the service assembly-line, the Mountain Alley rooms have steep stairs and no lift, and the public Hoshino area outside — Harunire Terrace and the Tombo-no-yu spa — gets crowded. One-night bookings open only 30 days ahead.