Hakone
Hakone Gora Karaku
箱根・強羅 佳ら久（オリックスホテルズ＆リゾーツ）
Katsushika Hokusai, “Kajikazawa in Kai Province (Kōshū Kajikazawa), from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei)” — The Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0
Karaku stands in Gora, three minutes' walk from Gora Station on the Hakone Tozan Railway. All 70 of its rooms have a hot-spring open-air bath of their own; in the deluxe rooms it sits on the balcony and is reached straight from the indoor shower room, and in the accessible Universal Room it is fitted with a transfer bench. Deluxe rooms are about 57.8 square metres including the balcony. The spring is sodium chloride, heated and diluted rather than free-flowing.
Two view baths, Sokai and Myojo, face the Hakone range and Sagami Bay. They alternate between men and women and open 5:00-10:00 and 15:00-24:00, one with a mist sauna, the other with a dry sauna; guests with tattoos are not admitted to either. Three private baths - cypress, stone, and a microbubble "Silk" bath that uses no hot spring water - take advance reservations at 5,000 yen an hour, with soft drinks free in the changing room.
Dinner and breakfast are both served in the restaurants. Mutsuki cooks Japanese food built on the kaiseki tradition; Tomura is a teppanyaki grill. The guests-only lounge pours drinks at no charge from 7:00 to 11:00 and 14:00 to 20:00, then runs as a bar until 22:30.
Check-in is 15:00 and check-out 11:00. A free shuttle runs twice daily each way from JR Odawara Station, booked online in advance. Children are accepted: under-threes may share a bed without meals or bedding; from three, both must be booked. Pets are not permitted.
Why we chose it
Every room has a hot-spring bath of its own, which makes the communal baths optional - worth knowing, since guests with tattoos are turned away from both view baths. The three reservable baths have published hour-long slots and a flat 5,000 yen rate, so a soak can be fixed before arrival. Three minutes from Gora Station, with a free Odawara shuttle, it works without a car.
What it has
- Reservable private bath
- Room with private hot spring bath
- Kaiseki dinner
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Prices are indicative and change with dates and availability.
Sources
- Official site: hot springs (Japanese)
- Official site: access and shuttle bus (Japanese)
- Official site: East wing deluxe room, Japanese style (Japanese)
- Official site: West wing universal room (Japanese)
- Official site: main dining Mutsuki (Japanese)
- Official site: grill restaurant Tomura (Japanese)
- Official site: guest lounge (Japanese)
- Official site: house rules, PDF (Japanese)
- Rakuten Travel: facility information (Japanese)
- Ikyu.com listing (Japanese)
- Jalan listing (Japanese)