Hakone
Casablanca Villa Hakone
Ｃａｓａｂｌａｎｃａ Ｖｉｌｌａ Ｈａｋｏｎｅ
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
Casablanca Villa Hakone is a single house in Motohakone, let to one party at a time, in forest with a view toward Lake Ashi. The operator calls it a two-storey 3LDK of 181.4 sq m, three bedrooms and a shower room over the living area. Each bedroom holds two beds and the house sleeps two to seven. Child rates are set; a play room has a bouldering wall.
A hinoki sauna takes three or four, runs to 100C and needs about an hour to heat. On the terrace is a goemonburo, a cast-iron tub used as a cold plunge after the sauna, or an open-air bath once filled with hot water. Its materials disagree: Rakuten's plan copy calls this a hot-spring bath; the villa's own pages never say onsen and give no spring composition. Heating the pool to 38-40C costs 12,000 yen a night, booked ahead, though its pages put that deadline at two, three or four days.
The Rakuten plan is room-only, with a kitchen for self-catering. Meals are otherwise pre-ordered: a Japanese breakfast of Kamakura bacon or salted salmon, or French toast; for dinner barbecue, shabu-shabu, or a private chef cooking wafu kaiseki or a French course.
Check-in is 15:00, check-out 10:00; the latest arrival is 18:00 on Rakuten but 22:00 in the guest guide. Staff meet arrivals, show the house and remain on site. Hakone-Yumoto Station is about 25 minutes by car, the Futagojaya bus stop a ten-minute walk. Pets, fireworks and indoor smoking are not permitted.
Why we chose it
The villa's own guest guide is unusually frank: it warns that insects come with the wooded setting, that the nearest supermarket is forty minutes' drive, and that the sauna wants an hour from cold. That candour, plus a whole house for one party with a working kitchen, is why it is here. We also flag the terrace bath, because its own listings answer the hot-spring question two different ways.
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Prices are indicative and change with dates and availability.