Onsen & Stay OAKHILL

24-hour hot spa and free-to-use beverage machine

Loved our stay here. Staff were so friendly and helpful. The onsen was a great experience. Perfect location to ski fields and a short walk down the hill to town for restaurants and bus terminal. Rooms were traditional ryokan-style and more spacious than typical hotel rooms in Japan.

Awesome place

Nothing

Staff were helpful and polite, all the facilities were clean and in good condition. Didn't get the breakfast or dinner plan, but had water/tea and soup available for free alongside some delicious Yamagata sort of waffle cookie. You can also bathe at seven (iirc) other hotels in the city, but unfortunately didn't have the time to properly enjoy that.

Arrived at the latest available bus from Yamagata City and the pathway was pretty dark which made the uphill walk a little bit scary considering the "bear threat". Would've loved it if the hotel had offered some kind of pick-up service from the Zao terminal.

Very friendly staff, amazing public onsen that is usually very quiet, the hotel itself looks lovely, complementary drinks until 9pm, free beer between 6-7pm and an overall fair price for the stay.

Bring your own dinner. The dinner situation here is by far my biggest complaint. You pay for overpriced convenience store Bento boxes that are of lower quality than actual convenience store food. We tried to get 2 curry microwavable Bento boxes (1,500 yen each) but there was only one left so we had to share it. You also have to heat them up yourselves. There is no other option nearby for food especially if its snowing, so you don't have any other options. It really hurt the luxury feel of the Ryokan for me, otherwise I would have very little complaints.