KAI Kirishima

Hoshino Resorts' mountainside inn where every one of the 49 rooms looks across the Kirishima highlands to Sakurajima, with a glass slope car down to a bathhouse in a pampas-grass meadow — but most rooms have only a shower, Sakurajima often hides in haze, and recent reviews grumble about grubby windows and thin dinners

KAI Kirishima opened on 29 January 2021 as the 17th inn in Hoshino Resorts' KAI brand, high on Mt Takachiho-no-mine, where Japanese myth says the gods came down to earth. All 49 rooms are Japanese-style 'Satsuma Shirasu' rooms with headboards of volcanic shirasu earth and a wall of glass facing south over the Kirishima highlands to Kagoshima Bay and Sakurajima. Bloggers who stayed from 2022 to 2026 describe gasping when the curtains open. The other highlight is the bath: a glass slope car glides about 50 m down to a bathhouse in a pampas-grass meadow, with a free-flowing hot tub, a lukewarm tub and an open-air bath with nothing in front but grassland and sky. At night the staff, masked as gods, perform the 20-minute 'Tenson Kōrin ENBU' drum dance. Dinner is a kaiseki built around Kagoshima black pork shabu-shabu in a broth topped up with freshly shaved bonito, finished with soba. On one major Japanese booking site it rates 4.4 across 506 reviews, with rooms at 4.5 and breakfast and service lowest at 4.3. The complaints are consistent, though. Sakurajima is often lost in haze or cloud, and several 2025–2026 guests found the picture windows dirty. Some found dinners small or plain and the dining room noisy and slow. Others mention dated fittings, narrow soft beds and the slope car being the only way to the bath, even in rain. The standard rooms have a shower only. Two meals for two cost about ¥62,700 in a standard room on the regular plan, or about ¥50,000 with an early-booking discount.