Kotohira Kadan
C · 6.1 / 10situational
A 43-room Kotohira inn built around Chouseiden, a history-steeped standalone villa once home to the local lord and hung with the original owner's art collection. KI-NRT calls the room well worth the privilege as an experience and dinner a delight, and sums it up as a good stay at a reasonable price, though the service was indifferent and the villa has no private onsen bath, only free use of the rentable one.
Scores
Food 3.5 / 5
Dinner is served in the room, and KI-NRT calls it a delight: the kitchen makes an effort with seasonal, local dishes that give you a good taste of Kagawa, and the deep-fried pike conger with simmered vegetables in dashi broth was unique and flavorful, as was the red sea bream shabu-shabu. It is not the best ryokan meal he has had, and breakfast was varied and bountiful without anything that blew them away, which suited a morning of udon tasting.
Bath
The Chouseiden villa has no onsen bath of its own, which KI-NRT counts as its one drawback, since he expects one in the top room of a top-level ryokan. Some of the standard rooms do have in-room onsen baths, which might tip some people toward them, and there is a private bath that can be rented by the hour and is free for guests in the Hanare villas. Nobody in the thread has described the water itself.
Service 2.5 / 5
Service is not up to the standards of the top luxury ryokans, which KI-NRT puts down partly to the high room count and perhaps to a less refined service culture in Kagawa. There was nothing wrong with the staff, but their attitude was indifferent overall: nobody came running out to help with the bags when they pulled into the parking lot, requests were met at a leisurely pace at best, and in the thread he calls them robotic and cold.
Room 3.5 / 5
Chouseiden is the top room, a stand-alone villa once home to the local lord and hung with the original owner's art collection of screens, sliding doors and scrolls by famous artists. It has 152m² of space, but it is so old and history-laden that KI-NRT calls it scary (a famous sumo wrestler supposedly ran screaming out of its traditional second bathroom), and he thinks it needs a refurb. As an experience he found it well worth the privilege.
Place 3 / 5
Kotohira Kadan is within easy walking distance of Kotohira-gu (Konpira-san), one of Shikoku's top sights, and some of the finest Sanuki udon restaurants are close by. The grounds are not massive, though there is a pretty little pond with interesting vegetation around it, and the architecture of the Hanare villas gives the property a real sense of place next to the shrine. With 43 rooms there can be a walk to reception, outdoors from Chouseiden.
Getting there
- Takamatsu — 1h10, 1 transfer. JR Dosan/Yosan line Takamatsu to Kotohira runs about 40-60 min, then the inn's free pickup is roughly 30 min by car from JR Kotohira Station.
- Okayama — 1h30, 1 transfer. Hourly Limited Express Nanpu covers Okayama to Kotohira in about 1h across the Seto bridge, then roughly 30 min by the inn's car from Kotohira Station.