Amane Resort Seikai
I came across this onsen ryokan/hotel while perusing onsen ryokans and hotels in Beppu (Japan’s premier onsen town) on Amextravel.com. I was initially taken by the spacious rooms all with ocean views and in-room onsen baths. However, we found it cheaper to book directly on the hotel’s website at https://www.seikai.co.jp/. The hotel is located right next to the ocean and has a total of about 50 rooms. The room we booked, a “Deluxe Modern Japanese-Style Room with Open-Air Bath,” was the smallest at a very spacious 829 sqf.

Hotel entrance


Hotel lobby

Check-In
We pulled into the hotel entrance and were immediately met by the valet who took our luggage and parked our car while another staff member escorted us into the hotel lobby and asked us to sit down on chairs overlooking Beppu Bay. While comfortably seated we were checked in and then escorted outdoors to a bar where we selected sparkling wine from a drink menu and sat down at a table overlooking the ocean and enjoyed our drinks. After this, we were escorted to our room by an American staff member.

Outdoor seating

Room
Our third-floor room commanded a wonderful ocean view and included a balcony with two chairs, but the cold weather prevented from us from using it. A base room this spacious and comfortable is quite rare in Japan so we were very impressed. In addition to a spacious luggage and closet storage area next to the entrance, there was a small kitchenette with a small empty fridge (in which we chilled our own store-bought beer and wine), a bathroom, a washroom next to the onsen bath, which is open-air and always full of natural hot spring water. The living room has two comfortable chairs in front of a wall-mounted LCD TV, and diagonally behind the chairs abutting the window is a large, cushioned area with pillows where you can lie down and relax with an ocean view. To the left side of the chairs is the sleeping area, which is also spacious with sliding doors that separate the bedroom from the living room. Overall, you feel like you are in an apartment. The in-room onsen bath comfortably accommodates two people with an open-air ocean view. The water temperature was about perfect for me, but you could also adjust the temperature with the controls.

Living room with chairs otttomans

Balcony

Relaxation area

Kitchenette

In-room onsen bath




Shared Onsen Bath
There are also shared bathing areas on the first and eighth floors. However, since the first-floor bathing area was under renovation, we could only use the eighth-floor bath, so we gave it a try. It was comprised of several washing stalls and one large rectangular bath and a second round jacuzzi bath but overall, it is not that spacious. From the jacuzzi, there’s a nice ocean view and there’s a balcony where you can sit or stand and enjoy the view. There was no cold-water bath or sauna, and other than having a nice view, we were not particularly impressed with it, so from then on, we bathed only in our room. We much prefer onsen that provide a sauna and cold bath in addition to the hot bath, so the absence of these was disappointing, but not uncommon for an onsen ryokan.

Dining
The ryokan/hotel provides a few restaurant options including dining at its next-door sister property Gahama Terrace. I was a little concerned because I had read somewhat mixed reviews on tripadvisor.com of the restaurants. I read that one of the restaurants even provides live jazz music, but my wife chose to dine at Kunitake located in Gahama Terrace for our evening meal. The weather was cold, so we were driven there in a golf cart, but you can quickly walk there too. The menu consisted mostly of Western-style cuisine. Although we sat indoors, our table had a nice view of the outdoor pool. The first two appetizers that we ordered, sauteed shrimp and garlic bread, were quite good but the fish and chips appetizer was poorly executed and tasteless and one of our pasta dishes was the same. Overall, we were disappointed and will try a different restaurant if we return. Breakfast, OTOH, was excellent with a good selection of both Japanese and Western dishes as well as self-service pouring of some nice sparkling wine. The restaurant also provides a pleasant ocean view.

Buffet breakfast

View from our table at breakfast time

Service
The hotel has an international staff and because of my foreign provenance, I was assigned a friendly American member of the staff to escort us to our room and drive us to the restaurant. I found the staff to be generally attentive and strove to provide good service but during our short stay, our interaction was somewhat limited. However, I did feel that they dropped the ball when we checked out and exited the building as they only said goodbye without asking us if we needed help with transportation. The hotel driveway exits onto a highway, so transportation of some kind is needed but the valet was nowhere to be found and we had no idea where our car was parked so we had to track someone down to help us. There was none of the customary apology typical in Japan that is said for keeping a guest waiting.

Location
The ryokan is in Beppu City between the beach on one side and a highway on the other. While the location provides all rooms with an excellent ocean view, the highway behind it makes walking around the area more difficult with long waits to cross the street at the traffic light. Also, there are few restaurants nearby, so your dining options are mostly limited to those inside the hotel. That said, there is a KFC right across the street, but not much else. If you wish to go sightseeing in Beppu, this would be a good location to base yourself, especially if you have a car.

Beppu onsen tourist area Oniyama Jigoku (Devil Mountain Hell)

Overall
The hotel is considered one of eight luxury onsen ryokans/hotels in Beppu and rates highly on customer feedback. We were impressed with the size and comfort of our room and liked having an in-room onsen bath to use at any time, which is much more convenient than going back and forth to a shared bathing room and changing and unchanging each time. The facility is in a nondescript cement structure (common in Japan) and not especially attractive from the outside, but it is new (I believe built in 2013) and the interior is attractively appointed with a luxurious feel, but less so than the ANA Intercontinental Beppu Hotel & Resort, where we also stayed during this trip. The ocean views are nice and relaxing, but I would prefer to return during the late Spring or in the Summer so that I could enjoy sitting on the balcony and using the hotel’s other outdoor spaces. Considering the unusually spacious rooms with in-room baths, the breakfast buffet, and the level of comfort, we thought it was a good value pricewise and would like to return for a longer stay but try a different restaurant next time.