So, for anyone out there still on tenterhooks off the back of my last post, please rest assured that I did in fact make it back to Kyoto with sphincter intact in the end. With that most pressing of updates (as it were) now officially out of the way, I’d instead like to run with a different theme from the last entry – which is the humble Japanese ryokan.

I alluded to ryokan in my last post, as shukubo share some of the features of this type of quintessentially Japanese accommodation. Essentially, a ryokan is a traditional, family-run inn, which typically features tatami-matted rooms, roll-out futon beds, sliding doors and communal baths (often based on hot springs, if any are nearby) – oh, and they typically give you a yukata to wear for the duration of your stay as well. To date, I’ve been staying mainly in hostels (mainly so I can chat to people of an evening in the bar), but I wanted to make sure I stayed in a ryokan proper at least once during my stay in Japan – so booked myself into one for my second interim stint in Kyoto, after getting back from Koyasan.

My conclusions…? Staying in a ryokan (at least one on the ‘cheap and cheerful’ end of the spectrum, like I did) was in my case very much like going to stay with your little old eccentric Japanese grandparents, who are very much looking forward to your visit, but at the same time seem vaguely surprised by the fact you’ve actually turned up at all and aren’t exactly sure what to do with you now you’re here…

Now, said grandparents are absolutely, unfailingly lovely – but equally do also have their idiosyncratic ‘little ways’, such as having the heating on full blast all of the time and wanting to know the exact timings for your next shower, not to mention demonstrating a curiosity (bordering on intrusiveness / obsession at times…) as to where you’re going, who you’re seeing and when you’ll be back again whenever you leave the building. They may similarly have a penchant for hot water in thermos flasks and/or hot water bottles, have built a slightly bonkers shrine to tat in the reception area, and overall seem somewhat distrustful of and/or bemused by t’internet – having gone so far as to install wifi at some point in the not-too-distant past, but preferring themselves to check guests in and out via the trusty offline medium of a big fat hardback ledger instead (in the most beautiful kanji calligraphy, it must be said though….). Finally they may or may not have the Japanese equivalent of garden gnomes in the garden (those big balled tanuki things again…).

There will almost certainly be a decided preoccupation with house slippers in their various different guises – and woe betide you should you forget these rules for a second! Let’s pause for a moment on slipper logic in Japan, which – I have to say – strikes me as just a teensy tiny bit OTT, if my recent ryokan experience is anything to go by at least…

Firstly, you have to take off your outdoor shoes off at the threshold – which I totally get and am down with (don’t want to bring outside dirt into the home and all that). Then secondly, you have to put on indoor slippers (of which there are a vast array to choose from at the door), but – and this is important – these are for the halls only. You will need to take off said hall slippers again after just a few feet (or even just a few steps), before you enter your actual ryokan room – and this apparently serves as a key indicator to your hosts as to whether you’re in or out at any one time, as I later found out to my cost (fortunately not while in any compromising position at the time though!). Then thirdly there are the bathroom slippers, which you have to change into from your hall slippers (which, remember, must be donned at the threshold of your room, but absolutely not inside it) and same again in the other direction. The absolute worst thing you can do in a ryokan (also garnered from first-hand recent experience) is to momentarily forget that you are in bathroom slippers and not hall slippers and wander off innocently back to your room again – this faux pas will be greeted with scarcely concealed horror by your hosts, to whom this is akin to stepping directly in a dirty great bathroom turd* and trailing it all along the whole ryokan corridor… Well, far be it from me to criticise another culture in any way here, but I do feel I have to let you know, Japan, that we have these little things in the West called socks, which cover literally all of the above scenarios interchangeably without issue or drama. We use them in living room, kitchen, hall, bathroom and even (shock horror) the toilet, and to my knowledge no one has died yet… 😉

But, of course, all of the above is conducted with such endearing charm and graciousness that you can’t help but smile and do as you’re told asked here… Plus, they do offer a mean and most beautifully presented breakfast (as pictured below).

(This is where the grandparent analogy ends for me, by the way. Back in the day at my grandma’s, it was always Kelloggs cornflakes topped off with a mountain of sugar, plus all the cream off the top of the milk (as delivered by the milkman that morning) and possibly followed by a chaser of party ring biscuits – a meal which made up in calorie communicated love what it lacked in any form of basic sophistication, and actually makes me feel all a bit teary-eyed and nostalgic, now I think about it…)

Now, I am quite sure there are many other ryokan out there in Japan that are, shall we say, less homely and more sophisticated this one, just like in the UK our B&Bs run the full gauntlet from bad to basic to bijoux (as ‘Four in a Bed’ on 4oD will amply demonstrate). All I can do is speak my truth in respect of this particular stay – which for our purposes I think we’ll class under the category of ‘charmingly bonkers’ for now.

Anyhoo… I’ll be posting shortly in bit about my last full day in Kyoto (or thereabouts, at any rate…), so watch this space for the moment!

* I just don’t get why though. Surely the very point of being in a bathroom is not to deposit your excreta all over the floor….? And, statistically speaking, your average bathroom surface is usually cleaner than kitchen surface, after all (not mine, I hasten to add – my kitchen’s bloody spotless…).