Ryokan Ginkaku Kyoto

Basically this is a hotel without furniture (no tv either). Staff is very unhelpful, unpolite and doesn’t speak English. When you are travelling to Japan you need to choose if you are travelling for aesthetics or not. For example are you okay with starbucks matcha or you want real traditional japanese matcha. This hotel is a starbucks among ryokans. 1. When I’ve arrived I was expecting dinner as in all other ryokans. They don’t provide dinner for Trip.ru bookings. And you can’t but dinner onsite if you didn’t book it in advance. 2. Flooring in the room is very slippery. When exiting the bathroom I’ve slipped and fall back hurting my head. Please be Cautious. 3. Hotel was unable to store my luggage on check out. I was checking out at 6am and asked to store my bags till 6pm. The manager said that they have a large group arriving at 3pm sp they can’t store the bag. I mean I have 1 bag. How it could disturb big group? I said ok, fine I’ll come back for my bag before 3pm. Manager said again that large group is arriving at 3pm. Ok, I replied, I’ll get back before 3pm. The manager replied that he doesn’t understand English. Basically we spent five minutes both with and without google teanslate trying to understand each other. At the end for me it was completely clear that japanese “i dont understand English” actually means that they don’t want to store my luggage. I left the left the building with my bags. 4. I had very unpleasant conversation with another manager. I was explaining to him what travellers are expecting from ryokans when he said smth like: “Of course, you know all about ryokans” (like you understand that I’m foreigner and he is local). It was very unpleasant comment. I’ve asked if this was an irony or sarcasm? At this point he started saying that he doesn’t understand English. He was speaking very clearly a minute before, but then started saying again and again that he doesn’t speak English. I quite sure that irony and sarcasm are considered rude as in most countries. And in some countries such reply from the manager could be considered racist. So basically it’s too many stories for one night stay. Definitely not worth the money.

Perfect place to experience Ryokan but still have modern amenities and a high class hotel. All perfect