My partner loves onsen ryokan, famous onsen ryokan or the special ones that give you great value for the money, wonderful food, wonder service with the personal touch and personality of an Okami-san or family run ryokans that are sometimes passed down for generations. They can be gigantic and gorgeous like Tsukioka onsen Kahou or quaint and quiet like Sakihana onsen Issuisou. Some places like Iwanoyu offer a floating world experience where you can leave reality for the duration of your stay, for a price of course but worth it for the experience.
And then there are Onsen Ryokan like Osawa-kan, simple and rustic, service that covers the basics but revolves around the personality, and sharp eye, of the owner, who makes you feel at home inviting guests to relax and sit around the open hearth with charcoal burning, help themselves to roast hard little mochi cakes until they are warm and soft. And drink sake. Little touches abound, a glass case freezer stocked full of ice candy to cool down with after soaking in the onsen, fresh blocks of tokoroten lazily floating in a stone basin with cold mountain stream running water, waiting to be fished out and squirted through a bamboo gun into noodles. There were strategically placed antique cigarette box/ashtrays with little drawers full of cigarettes, inviting smokers to take a break. And those hard blocks of mochi waiting to be roasted by guests on the open hearth along with fresh fruit bobbing in a cold basic in the front entrance. Even when the master wasn’t around much, his presence was everywhere.
The Osawa-kan founder/owner passed away 2 years ago but my partner only found out about it this spring. He had been going there since his college days and we had spent many good times there. A reliable, inexpensive place to soak in a good onsen with reliable service. He felt a little sad, one more fond memory slipping away and wanted to see it one last time. The daughter was running it now but, ominously, closing it for a few months of renovation work. She had also raised the prices considerably but there was a time limited ‘closing special’ weekday discount, so we booked an overnight stay and took off to Niigata.
The place looked exactly the same but the old staff we knew was gone, old touches were fading away: the tokoroten stone basin was empty and dry, as was the antique cigarette ashtray box. The onsen had changed too. The pleasant quiet stream of fresh onsen water was now a loud chlorinated gush of recycled, reheated onsen. My partner’s skin is very sensitive to chlorinated water. As a rule we only go to fresh unchlorinated onsen, as he says, “If I’m paying good money there’s no point soaking in a chlorinated onsen water that makes my skin break out.”
The Osawa-kan master played the role of ‘yumori‘ (traditional keeper of the onsen waters) very well. It’s a fine art of delicately balancing constantly changing conditions: controlling onsen inflow to keep the water clean and fresh at the right temperature, which in turn depends on indoor or outdoor location, surface area, air temperature, the number of people using it at any given time. And keeping everything extremely clean which involves regularly draining the baths and scrubbing them out. The baths were as clean as ever but the smell of chlorine overpowered the relaxing, natural mineral water smell. The noisy gushing recycled water made it difficult to have a quiet conservation in the soak or hear the bird song in the open outdoor bath.
The food had changed too, dinner had a sprinkle seasoning of western dishes that didn’t mix well, raw salad, a paprika something dish stuck between the traditional fish and nabe offerings. The Osawa-kan master knew what Japanese foods went well with what he wanted to sell: the famously delicious local rice and sake of Minamiuonuma, home of Hakkaisan. He told us that secret of bringing people back was carefully keeping the price within ¥12,000~¥13,000 mark for a nights stay with 2 meals. Anything over that and people would spend their money somewhere else or just stay once without coming back for more. At that price, with sake and onsen, people come back to booze a bit with the master, and they did. Like the nurse from Niigata who came once a year to relax and booze around the irori. Or the woman from England who didn’t speak much Japanese but came regularly to enjoy sake fueled onsen soaking making it her last stop before returning home in 2011. The Tokyo city office worker with wife and child in tow. Repeaters all.
But these kinds of places are going away, hard hit by the COVID continental divide where the after never matches what was there before. Family run places sell out to hedge fund run group companies that fancy places up for inbound foreigners and young Japanese people at fancy prices, neither of whom have any idea of the lousy over priced service for what they are paying. They don’t care about the lousy price performance because they are the very people who never come back. With the increase of inbound visitors comes the rising problem of onsen ryokan amenity theft, something that was unheard of a decade ago. Or the outrageous price gouging found in Niseko, or the flood of inbound visitors to Kinosaki Onsen forsaking the very business model that built and maintained onsen ryokan villages all these years. Inbound want cheap hotels, not ryokan. It’s unsustainable in the long term. The end result without repeat business: when the social media buzz dies along with the inbound visitors, so does the business.
Family run places deeply understand the importance of repeat business. Faithful customers who come in good times and bad times to enjoy the experience. Fund run places only want rich ninnies who don’t understand real value, only judging by price tags. As the saying goes, the more you pay for a forgery, the more you’ll believe it’s the real thing.
We had a good time at Osawa-kan, knowing it was the last time, saying goodbye to our good memories. I wonder and hope there are some former regulars somewhere who have good memories too.
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