Hakone

4.6 years in Japan. First time to Hakone, which is the closest onsen place near Tokyo.

The town is small and relies heavily on tourist travelers that are day tripping or coming down just for a weekend from Tokyo. This is similar to Leavenworth, which relies on travelers coming from Seattle.

This means that the location has an almost singular focus, providing an experience for those visitors that they will enjoy and hopefully want to repeat. This focus though often differs from how things are in daily life, in that it is hyper optimized, and things that you might experience in a normal onsen town, you will not experience here. Likewise, there are some additional accommodations that a normal onsen traveler will not encounter but they exist in Hakone as the town needs people to repeatedly visit.

Some things though, are authentic and true. The beds are traditional Japanese style, and even if you find a place that offers western style accommodations, you should expect the bedding to be hard, futon based, and with the rice filled pillows. This is something that most western visitors find uncomfortable, and yet it is still there.

This begs the question of why? Why has this item not been optimized for western visitors? Well, most western visitors are not likely to repeat. They are coming as part of their short vacation to Japan (longer vacations would go elsewhere) and are not likely to return to Hakone or establish a personal relationship with any of the onsens there. They (the western tourists) expect an "authentic" onsen experience, and so portions of it are given to them, as they save on cost, which means that the bedding is not optimized.

Contrast this with DisneySea or DisneyLand in Tokyo, which have realized that tourists will travel annually to visit the parks from other places in the world where soft bedding is expected. The resort hotels supporting those parks have allocated a fair percentage of their to providing soft beds, extra pillows and more westernized accommodations. This has the added economic benefit of making the park more resistant to downturns in local economy whereas when COVID hit, many of the onsen in Hakone were forced to close and are now abandoned.

Admittedly the small onsen cannot calculate the economic benefit of focusing on western tourists and does not have the space to allocate rooms for westerners that may be unreliable at visiting. But it does show the differences between a onetime experience and a relationship that will span generations - which for many Disney fans does.

I enjoyed Hakone, but as intended by the onsen there, as a westerner, I will not return.