Stayed at “Rakuten STAY VILLA Kinugawa Riverside

Rakuten STAY will hold the grand opening of “Rakuten STAY VILLA Kinugawa Riverside” on June 12.

The facility is located at 391-1 Ohara, Kinugawa Onsen, Nikko-shi, Tochigi Prefecture, about a 10-minute walk from Tobu World Square Station on the Tobu Railway Kinugawa Line and a 20-minute walk from Kinugawa Onsen Station along the Kinugawa River.

Sixteen maisonette-type two-story wooden detached houses are lined up (one of which uses the second floor of the common building as guest rooms), with each room ranging in size from 100.01 to 114.85 m2. The capacity is set at 6 to 10 persons per room. Room rates start at 30,000 yen per room. There are 26 parking spaces available, two of which are compatible with EV charging.

All rooms have baths with natural hot spring water (drawn hot water) and a wooden deck terrace where guests can enjoy cooking teppanyaki and other dishes using hot plates. A refrigerator installed in the room also provides a welcome drink that can be enjoyed free of charge.

Rakuten Stay has been increasing the number of rooms with saunas in recent years, and at Kinugawa Riverside, 14 of the 16 rooms have saunas and the remaining two rooms have bedrock bath beds. In addition, some rooms have massage chairs for guests to relax to their heart’s content.

Some rooms are equipped with sky net play equipment and slides to take advantage of the skipped floor space and steps to keep families with small children occupied. Four dog-friendly rooms are also available, with footbaths that can be used with your dog.

In addition, Room 107 was designed with barrier-free access in mind, and the first floor of the room is flat with no steps. Only this room has a sliding door at the entrance, and the bathroom entrance and toilet are also designed to be comfortable for people with handicaps.

This time we had the opportunity to test stay in room 114 with massage chair.

I have stayed at Rakuten Stay facilities many times, and it is a personal pleasure for me to check the updates that are made every time a new facility is opened.

Many of Rakuten Stay’s accommodations have kitchens with cooking appliances such as microwave ovens, rice cookers, and coffee makers, as well as tableware, glasses, and cutlery, but it is customary to open each drawer one by one to check what is in the many drawers. It was customary to open the drawers one by one to check what was in each drawer.

In order to solve these confusing problems, Kinugawa Riverside has put stickers on the drawers that show what is mainly contained in the drawers, so that guests can find the item they are looking for without getting lost. Although it still takes time to find a small item like a bottle opener, it would be helpful for first-time guests to at least notice that the bottom row is a drawer.

In addition, some rooms have outlets with USB PD (Type-C) ports, although I could not find any in Room 114. While there have been rooms with Type-A ports in the past, it would be nice to see USB PD compatibility so that one can quickly charge smartphones and other devices, eliminating the need to bring an AC adapter. We hope that this will be adopted as a standard specification.

Although we did not use it for this test stay, the official Rakuten Stay application for smartphones is now available. At present, the app only allows users to make reservations, but according to the company, new features will be added in the near future.

For example, Rakuten Stay facilities require guests to enter the room by entering their PIN code into the smart lock at the entrance of each room, and then kneel in front of the tablet installed in the room to complete the check-in procedure. We look forward to the addition of new features.

As the name “Riverside” suggests, the Kinugawa River runs right next to the hotel, and when you open the window on the terrace side, you can hear the murmuring of the river and the chirping of birds. Rakuten Stay operates five facilities in Tochigi Prefecture, and I would say that this is the most relaxing and nature-inspired of them all.

The rooms are equipped with a kitchen and laundry facilities, so if possible, it would be better to stay two or more nights in a row for a more relaxed stay. There is a supermarket and a drugstore about a five-minute walk away, so it is easy to go out for groceries. In the unlikely event that you arrive late and the stores are not open, there is a vending machine on the first floor of the common building that you can operate with your smartphone to purchase drinks and food.

One thing to note is the temperature of the baths. In previous Rakuten Stay facilities, guests had to fill the bathtubs with hot water themselves, but recently the bathtubs have been filled with hot water upon arrival, allowing guests to enjoy the hot spring baths immediately. This is a welcome service, but the hot water was so hot that it was enough to make me act like a hot water commercial, probably due to the fact that the facility is not carrying hot water but drawing hot water from the hot spring. There is a button on the side of the bathtub for adding water, which can be used to lower the temperature, but I recommend that you first open the outside window of the bathroom when you arrive and use the outside air to lower the temperature of the water before taking a bath.

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