Fufu Nara

Great property and best location for exploring Nara. The room was outstanding as well as the dinner: we had one tepanyaki and one kaiseki dinner: among the best food we had in Japan!

The communication with the hotel before arriving was quite difficult. Also the flexibility of staff when leaving earlier and having a breakfast was not to our best satisfaction: for a property with this ambitions and price level the requests of the clients should be key, especially if the requests are not out of range.

The breakfast was included in the room charge. We had it at 8:00am and the food itself was alright. However, we felt a little awkward when we were asked at the breakfast about our check-out time. The impression I had was that they rushed us to leave the hotel as soon as possible.

The whole experience was not pleasant from the beginning of check-in awkwardness to finding the bathtub uncleared to the next morning being threatened by an assistant general manager there. Upon check-in, we felt extremely awkward when the check-in manager 1) asked us about me and my companion's relationship and 2) requested to take a photo for two of us after room tour. It was literally the first time ever to see the check-in staff so minding their customers' business that he would want to know about relationship of their customers and would offer to take photo for us in the room even though we had NEVER requested to take one. We were left with disappointment with the so-called hot spring water (seems to me boiling water) after so looking forward to it - water was not hot enough while the bathtub was filled with dirts. We even had to do our own cleaning using the shoe brush from the hotel to remove the dirts that had been in the bathtub for long. Next morning at 9:30am as we were on our way out we were stopped by an assistant general manager. Not only did she demand us to check-out at 11:00 sharp but also she claimed to charge an additional fee if we were to miss the deadline. She was being unwelcoming and unhelpful and avoided to communicate by simply saying NO and giving us a hard time, when we shared our wish to check-out at 12:00 and expressed that we had noticed most other guests' check-out time at 13:00 and 14:00. She even blamed us that "our booking did not ADD VALUE to the hotel's preference". We were discriminated and threatened. Summing up this was my worst experience in a hotel ever that I had to write a review (first time writing). I booked this hotel in part because it was relatively new and because of the online marketing they had done promoting how great the ryokan was. After this experience, I would never stay at any of the other FUFU hotels.

Incredible modern kaiseki dining experience, beautiful room with very comfortable beds, and an amazing setting with our in-room onsen looking out at the bamboo garden. Our experience here was top-notch and worth every penny. Would not hesitate to stay here again on our next visit to Japan.

We loved everything here. Absolutely no complaints.