Jozankei Yuraku Soan

A new 102-room inn built like a tea-ceremony hut, tatami from the entrance to the lifts, a hiba onsen tub in every room and four free private baths — but it's big, busy with tour groups, and 2026 reviews complain about slow dinners and thin staffing

Yuraku Soan is Kyoritsu Resort's (the Dormy Inn group's) inn at Jozankei, which had its grand opening in February 2023. The design takes Sen no Rikyū's rustic sōan tea hut as its theme: you leave your shoes at the door, and tatami runs through the lobby, the corridors, the lifts and even the bathhouse floor. Every one of the 102 rooms has its own hiba-wood tub filled with Jozankei spring water, and four private baths — hinoki, hiba, ceramic and rock — are free and unbookable: if the lamp is off, go in. Japanese guests rate it 4.52 across 278 reviews on one major site (baths 4.63), 4.37 across 72 on another and 4.3 across 537 on a third, where service scores lowest at 4.1. Bloggers who stayed from 2023 to 2026 loved the freebies — a tea buffet, matcha served in the tea room, ice lollies after the bath, Dormy's free late-night ramen, sweets outside the restaurant, beans and a hand grinder for coffee in the room — and a kaiseki where you add extra small dishes and pick the final course (Hokkaido surf-clam curry, noodles or rice). Know before you book: it's a large, busy house. Guests in 2026 describe crowded check-ins with foreign tour groups, queues for the ramen, long waits between courses and for drinks, uneven service, and a September 2026 Deluxe Twin with fraying tatami and a rattling door. The shared baths are recirculated. Two-meal stays ran about ¥26,000–30,000+ per person in late summer and autumn 2026.