We stayed here for one night in October, our first stay since we spent our honeymoon here in 1985. Today, after a renovation completed in 2018, it is a luxury onsen hotel of just 25 rooms, but when we first stayed, the main building consisted of 100 rooms, and though still a famous onsen hotel in Unzen, it was less luxurious than today. My memory is still a bit hazy of our 1985 stay, but I vaguely remember the smaller rooms and being disappointed at staying in a concrete structure rather than an onsen ryokan of classical wooden design. That said, the stay was arranged for us by my mother-in-law as our honeymoon hotel and not paid for by us, so I had no say in the matter. Still, it’s hard to imagine the size of those 100 rooms, which have been shrunk down to the current 25 rooms, all spacious in size.

Since we live about an hour’s drive from Unzen, we sometimes visit the onsen there but usually only on day trips where we access a hotel or ryokan’s onsen during the several hours that it opens its baths for a fee to guests not staying at the ryokan or hotel. However, the Unzen Kyushu Hotel does not do this since it has no public onsen, only private in-room onsen baths. After reading KI-NRT’s review of this hotel in his Japan Luxury Ryokans thread, I thought it worth going back for a stay to see what all the hoopla is about.

Mt. Resort Unzen Kyushu Hotel

Hotel’s History
Opened in 1917, the hotel was originally designed as a hot spring resort catering to the foreign population of Nagasaki City, as well as Western diplomats and expats from Shanghai who came to Nagasaki on the Nagasaki-Shanghai ferry that plied the East China Sea back then. In fact, the hotel’s founder was once a chef of Western cuisine on that ferry, which, according to the hotel, is why the restaurant’s dinner menu is centered around European cuisine. The dining room is aptly named “1917” and reflects western design in Japan at that time. Due to Unzen’s elevation, it was cooler in the summer than in Nagasaki City, so foreign residents and visitors flocked there during the two hottest months of the summer. In addition to the onsen resort, Japan’s first public golf course was opened in Unzen to service the local foreign community, and it is also the site of Japan’s first national park. Outside the dining room are a number of historical photos of the hotel including photos of Emperor Hirohito and his grandson the current Emperor Naruhito when they stayed at this hotel.

Original hotel built in 1917


Early Unzen tourism posters

Check-In
At check-in, we were impressed by the posh and sophisticated atmosphere of the newly renovated hotel. While the staff explained the hotel's various features and amenities, we were each served green tea and homemade doughnuts as a welcome treat. Finished, we were guided to our room and admired the many modern Japanese architectural touches that we saw along the way.


Room
We booked a Premium King Room with Terrace with 50 sqm of space on the third floor of this five-floor hotel using 40k Amex MR points. The room, while spacious, consisted of multiple discrete spaces including a small Western-style living room with a small fridge (most of the drinks in it are free and replenished daily) and a window onto the Unzen Hell (Unzen Jigoku in Japanese), a boiling geothermal hot spring the billows steam in a hellish fashion. Other spaces include a sleeping area with bed and wall-mounted TV, a tatami-matted space with a low table and two chairs on the opposite side of the bed, a bathroom area with one sink, a separate room for the toilet, and a hot spring bath behind a glass door with a shower area, also with a view onto the Unzen Hell. Finally, there’s a spacious terrace with a sofa and low table with an excellent view of the hot spring hell. Although spacious (especially by Japanese standards), because of these distinct spaces, the room size feels somewhat diminished and less spacious overall. The in-room bath maintains a constant flow of hot spring water, but the temperature can be controlled manually by adjusting the knobs on the wall next to the bath. It does get hot after a while, so I alternated by taking a cold shower before entering the bath each time. The bath is always hot and full, so you can easily bathe at any time of the day.

Premium King Room with Terrace

Tatami room

Western-style living room area

Bathroom sink

In-room hot spring bath

Terrace

View from our room

Café Bar
On the second floor is a café bar called “The Mellow Ridge.” The bar has an indoor area with tables and chairs looking onto the outdoor terrace several steps below. The outdoor terrace has sofas, chairs, and tables, some with umbrellas for shade. You order your drink at the bar and then sit wherever you like, indoors or outdoors. Draft beer and red, white, and sparkling wine are all available free of charge. We stopped here before dinner and had a couple of drinks. There were only three or four others there, even though the hotel was sold out.

Cafe bar

Cafe bar's outdoor terrace

Roof Top Lounge
The lounge covers the entire roof and has both indoor and outdoor components. Commanding a 360-degree view of the Unzen Hell and the surrounding forest, it’s a wonderful place to relax and unwind. Indoors, there is a self-service bar where you can make your own coffee or tea, or pour your own juice in the morning and afternoon. In the evening, beer and wine are also served free of charge. Four reclining chairs, two with built-in massage functions, are your ringside seats to Dante’s Inferno (Unzen Hell). We poured ourselves some tea and coffee and enjoyed a mechanical massage on our reclining chairs while relaxing after our hot bath. There were only a couple of other people lounging there at the time. The outdoor area has numerous chairs and sofas with low tables looking onto the same view.

Rooftop lounge's self-service bar

Rooftop lounge

Reclining chairs with a view of the Unzen Hell

View from the outdoor area of the rooftop lounge

Dining
The very large dining room, called “1917” (the year of the hotel’s founding), commands a ringside view of the Unzen hellscape. The dining room is a 2018 reproduction of the original dining room built in 1917. Although there are probably enough tables to seat most, if not all, hotel guests in one sitting, we were asked to select one of four dining times between 6:00 pm and 8:30 pm. While this may have originally been a COVID-19 measure to reduce crowding, there was plenty of space between tables, even had all tables been full. With this schedule, the number of diners at one time was reduced so that every guest could sit at a window side table with a magnificent view of hell (the Unzen geothermal hell) during dinner, a view that not everyone would have had with the dining room at full capacity.

We originally booked just a room using Amex MR points as there were no dining options to choose from on the Amextravel website. We contacted the hotel before our stay and reserved breakfast and dinner, which came to 11,000 yen per person (7,000 yen dinner/4,000 yen breakfast) per night. We ate dinner at 6:00 pm sitting at a window side table overlooking the Unzen Hell, which is lit up and visible at night. Dinner was a 9-course set menu served in a spacious and stately dining room built in 2018 to resemble the original dining room of 1917. Like a traditional onsen ryokan but with a Western touch, guests could eat dinner and breakfast in the dining room wearing the pajama-like clothing provided in-room instead of yukatas.

For the sake of brevity, I will not go deeply into each dish but just say that we found the quality and taste of each dish generally good but uneven and found the sashimi, which was tough and unappetizing, particularly disappointing. While the ingredients appeared fresh, the taste was sometimes off the mark, and we would have preferred greater consistency. The dishes, mostly a European/Japanese fusion, were all attractively presented on interestingly designed plates and platters. The service was very good, and our waiter was precise in his actions, always turning at the exact same point when approaching our table, and clearly explaining each dish. Ultimately, it was the atmosphere that carried the day; the service was polished, the atmosphere stately, and the view of infernal hell was something to die for, ha-ha!

We ate breakfast at 8:30 am, again at a window-side seat with a clear view of hell. The miso soup and salad were tasty, but the rice came with many small clams simmered in soy sauce which were heavy and completely overpowered the rice, and for that matter, the whole meal, and for me were unappetizing. We came away with the same sense of inconsistency of dishes that we experienced at dinner time. That said, everything was nicely presented with good service and a great atmosphere.


Original dining room

Current dining room

View of the Unzen Hell from our dining table

Dinner menu

Breakfast menu

Location
The hotel is located smack dab in the middle of the Unzen Hell and is better located than any other Unzen hotel or onsen ryokan in the area. While Beppu in Kyushu has its “Seven Hells,” Unzen is said to have “30 Hells.” Guests have a magnificent view of the hells from their room, and just outside the hotel, they can take the walkway that meanders for some distance through the steaming geothermal hell for a long, pleasant walk. On the walkway and adjacent to the hotel is a small wooden hut where you can purchase eggs boiled in this hell and includes a small packet of salt and you can sit there and eat tasty salted boiled eggs.

In the early 1900s, the hotels surrounding the Unzen Hell were where Nagasaki’s foreign resident population and visitors from Shanghai via ferry boat stayed when visiting this resort area, which also included Japan’s first public golf course. In addition, the Unzen Hell has earlier historical significance, as it was here that 33 Christian martyrs were boiled alive in the early 1600s by the shogunate in a bid to stem the growth of this new religion in Kyushu by torturing and killing those who refused to renounce their faith. There’s even a cross and plaque on a hill above the walkway that memorializes them.

Ground-level view of the Unzen Hell

Uzen Hell

Unzen Kyushu Hotel in the middle of "hell"

Overall
It was an interesting experience to revisit this hotel after a 37-year absence. Although the main rectangular 5-story concrete structure remained, there were many new features and upgrades such as the larger rooms, the stately dining room, the rooftop lounge, café terrace, and other modern additions that made for a luxurious and comfortable stay. What I liked most is that after you check in, everything is provided and at your disposal (the free lounges and bars, the in-room baths, etc.) and you are on your own with a complete run of the house, something like a posh all-inclusive resort.

Although it has elements of an onsen ryokan, since it bills itself as a hotel, it has perhaps more latitude to be creative with its facilities which is generally more difficult for the traditional and formulaic onsen ryokan, although they too are changing and adopting newer ways. That said, if your goal is to bathe in hot springs in a relaxing atmosphere in the middle of a great sightseeing location, then it would be hard to beat the Unzen Kyushu Hotel.