Atami Taikanso

A 1940s steel magnate's villa named by the painter Yokoyama Taikan, with a big landscaped garden, a sea-view bathhouse and much-praised Kyoto-style kaiseki — but it's a rambling, older complex where people get lost, and only one of the three bathhouses is truly special

Taikanso started as the Atami villa of Nakayama Etsuji, founder of Nakayama Steel, built in 1940 and opened as an inn on 23 July 1948 with just six rooms. The painter Yokoyama Taikan often stayed and is said to have approved the name because the view was 'grand' (taikan); the room he used, Taikan-no-ma, is still let to guests. The garden was redesigned by the landscape scholar Tatsui Matsunosuke to borrow the view of Hatsushima and Ōshima, and the original sukiya rooms were built by the carpenter Hirata Masaya. Most of today's evidence comes from booking reviews rather than blogs: Japanese guests rate it 4.58 across 544 reviews on one major site (dinner 4.84, breakfast 4.81) and 4.9 across 596 on another, and four short 2026 blog posts agree. They praise the food above all — about ten courses of Kyoto-style kaiseki with abalone and Shizuoka kuroge wagyu, served in private or semi-private dining rooms — plus a welcome drink overlooking the garden, staff who bow to you in every corridor, extra care for older guests and birthdays, and the Sannō bath, whose water seems to run straight into Sagami Bay. The recurring complaints: the building is old and extended so many times that guests describe it as a maze, with long, chilly walks to dinner in winter; the other two bathhouses don't match Sannō; and two 2026 guests rated their rooms 2 out of 5 and marked down cleanliness. It also hosts company banquets. Two-meal plans run from about ¥60,000 for two, and more for top-floor rooms.