Last weekend we based ourselves for two nights at Muikamachi Hutte in Niigata. After making the 3-hour drive from Tokyo on Friday, we snowboarded on Saturday at the Muikamachi Hakkaisan Ski resort, did a half day on Sunday at the Hakkaisanroku Ski Area and then drove back home to Tokyo.
On our previous snowboarding trip in January to the nearby Joetsu Kokusai, we also stayed in the Muikamachi area but at a different Japanese guesthouse or “minshuku”. I think this Hutte technically also falls into the minshuku category. But the interior felt very fancy and quite modern, so it felt like a little bit of a different experience to your normal minshuku.
The owner seemed like quite a hip guy (for want of a better word) so there were a lot of little neat design touches, plus some carefully curated art and ski and snowboard-related books on the bookshelf. And a free coffee machine (yay).
As with all minshuku, you get a private room, but the bathrooms are shared. Which also means you need to share the onsen with other guests (there are no private showers). The pro of this place, for those not wanting to get naked with strangers, is that the onsen instead has a reservation system where you choose 30 to 60 minute blocks to use it in privately.
This also meant it was the first time my husband and I could share an onsen together, so that was quite nice too.
For two nights (Friday and Saturday), we paid 28,000 yen for the two of us. The cost for the Friday night was more like 12,000 yen, so you could probably get the price down a bit more if you went on two weekday nights.
The town of Muikamachi is only a 10-minute walk away, and there were plenty of food options. The owner is also super kind and will do drop-offs and pick-ups in his car to save you the walk.
I’m definitely going to be a repeat visitor to this place!
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