Hotel Ambient Izukogen Cottage

Comentarios destacados

• esquire84

  28 julio 2011
  Do not stay here unless you drive

  We spent a week at the Hotel Ambient in December with the in-laws. We were given a large family room in the Annex, which is 5 minutes from the main hotel by car. The rooms are nondescript and are nothing to boast about, although they are large by Japanese standards. The beds were slightly on the hard side although I went native and opted to sleep on the futons on the floor instead. First off, the location. Hotel Ambient is a good 15 minute car journey from Izukogen train station. Izukogen is itself a good 30-46 minute train journey from the nearest tourist attractions in the Izu peninsula (and a good 1.5 to 2 hours from Tokyo although not geographically far). If you are thinking of basing yourself in Izukogen in order to explore the beauty of the Izu peninsula, I hope you think very carefully about this. (1) The town centre consists of a few shops along a deserted strip, with one restaurant and no convenience stores in sight. (2) It gets eerily quiet and deserted in the evening and night. (3) The hotel shuttle bus makes the 15 minute journey to the train station only 5 times daily, the latest one being at around 5:30pm. If you miss the last shuttle bus, you'll have to flag down a local taxi to take you back to the hotel, which is quite pricey. (4) The trains arrive at fixed intervals as well. Depending on where you are going, you may end up having to spend over 1 hours just getting from the hotel to the train station to catch the train. It is SIMPLY NOT WORTH YOUR TIME. Although the Izu Peninsula is renowned as a place of outstanding beauty, the main tourist attractions lie further west (Hakone) or further north (Ito and Atami). Izukogen is, at best, a sleepy and quaint town nestled by the hills overlooking the coast. There is nothing much to do around the area. If you're a history buff, you can take the train further south to Shimoda to see where Perry & co. landed the black ships. Apart from that, there's nothing else. Now for the hotel proper. The quality of the hotel is what you would expect from a mid-range run-of-the-mill business hotel. The food that was served in the main building was good, although very expensive. We had no choice but to go with the hotel restaurant as the location of the hotel leaves much to be desired. On the plus side, being so remote, we practically had the whole Annex to ourselves. The onsen in the Annex is nowhere as nice as the onsen in the main hotel. The main hotel boasted outdoor onsens in traditional baths. The onsen in the Annex was basically a large bathing room with a hot tub attached. Having said that, it was still nice to soak in the hot tub at the end of a cold winter's day. The one BIG plus point about this hotel was the impeccable service of its staff. As we didn't speak Japanese and the hotel staff barely spoke English, communication was extremely difficult. This did not stop them from trying their best to accede to our requests - even to the extent of loading up Google translate and typing their sentences out hoping for an appropriate translation into English. Some travellers may find this exasperating and tedious, but we really saw the sincerity and service-mindedness of the hotel staff. They were always on the look out for us to ensure that we caught the right train and got the right connections on our day trips out. Should you book Hotel Ambient for your next holiday? I would say "no" unless you really enjoy the peace and quiet of the surrounding areas.

  

• goldg314

  15 septiembre 2018
  Cottage 70

  To much big for couples,.i think its gooods for 10 person there have 4rooms and kitchen livin.. and own parking.. old house..a little scary..the hot Springs is good.. you can refresh..thers have outside tub and inside..