Hotel Towadaso: A Stay Review — What’s Dinner and Breakfast Like?

For this trip, I stayed at Hotel Towadaso after learning it’s a well-regarded hotel around Lake Towada with a large communal bath and open-air bath.

In this article, I’ll share my honest impressions and review of my stay at Hotel Towadaso.

If you’re curious about staying at Hotel Towadaso, or you’re hunting for a good hotel around Lake Towada, this article should be a great fit for you, so stick around to the end.

Who Hotel Towadaso Is a Great Fit For

There are around 40 hotels around Lake Towada, which makes it easy to get stuck deciding where to stay.

Lake Towada, straddling Aomori and Akita prefectures, is one of Aomori’s signature sightseeing destinations, and the Oirase Gorge, which runs about 14km from the Nenokuchi lakeside area to Yakeyama, draws huge crowds as a particularly stunning scenic spot.

This time I chose Hotel Towadaso with sightseeing at Lake Towada and the Oirase Gorge in mind, and after actually staying here, I’d say Hotel Towadaso is a great fit for people who match the following:

• Want to sightsee at Lake Towada and the Oirase Gorge
• Want to keep accommodation costs as low as possible

Let’s go through each one.

First, people who want to sightsee at Lake Towada and the Oirase Gorge.

There’s a bus and a sightseeing boat connecting Hotel Towadaso to the Nenokuchi lakeside area, and it’s about a 10-15 minute drive by car, making this a great base for visiting the Oirase Gorge and its popular Choshi Falls.

Second, people who want to keep accommodation costs as low as possible.

As a well-known sightseeing area, hotel rates around Lake Towada tend to run higher than a typical city hotel. This is also the area with the Hoshino Resorts Oirase Keiryu Hotel, where rooms go for over ¥50,000 a night, but Hotel Towadaso offers room-only stays from around ¥5,000 on weekdays, or around ¥10,000 per person with meals included. (Whether that counts as a good deal, I think you’ll be able to judge for yourself by the end of this article.)

Access to Hotel Towadaso

Hotel Towadaso is one of the largest hotels on the shores of Lake Towada, with two large communal baths — one Japanese-style, one Western-style. It’s about a 45-minute drive from the Towada IC on the Tohoku Expressway, or about 120 minutes by car from either JR Hachinohe Station or JR Aomori Station.

If you’re taking the train plus bus, it takes over 2 hours from JR Hachinohe Station, so driving is the way to go.

Hotel Towadaso Plans and Rates

Hotel Towadaso is popular for its seasonal and local cuisine, open-air hot spring, and Japanese-style rooms (with private bathroom and free Wi-Fi). The plan I actually booked and stayed on was Rakuten Travel’s “Non-smoking [Room Type Assigned by Hotel (Japanese, Japanese-Western, or similar)],” which came to ¥14,820 on a weekday rate including dinner and breakfast. Split between two people, that’s ¥7,500 each — genuinely excellent value, no exaggeration.

Hotel Towadaso: Hotel Overview

Now let’s get into the details of my stay at Hotel Towadaso.

I drove to the Towada IC on the Tohoku Expressway, then took regular roads for about 45 minutes to reach the hotel — and that stretch of regular road felt pretty long!

The hotel’s parking lot holds around 150 cars, and I was able to use it for free without a reservation.

Check-In

Walking in through the entrance, a dazzling front desk is right there in front of you, so there’s no confusion about where to go.

Check-in starts at 15:00 and checkout is at 10:00 — pretty standard hours.

After being walked through the large communal bath, open-air bath, and the dinner and breakfast venues and times, check-in was complete. Thanks for having us!

Guest Room

The hotel is made up of five buildings: the Aoi-kan, which holds the large communal bath and the dinner and breakfast venues; the Midori-kan, which has a convention hall; and the Central, East, and West buildings, which hold the guest rooms. It’s genuinely huge!

The Central building has 81 rooms, the East building has 99, and the West building has 56 — I stayed in the Central building this time.

My room was 249. The door has an old-fashioned, well-worn look to it, but I suppose that’s to be expected.

The room is a Japanese-Western combo room, and this is the 8-mat Japanese-style side.

As you can tell from the photo, the LCD TV is quite small relative to the size of the room.

Next to the TV there’s a hair dryer, a yukata, a short happi coat, bath towels, regular towels, and a toothbrush.

The hotel’s yukata are kept out in the guest-room hallway. You can freely choose between three sizes: small (around 150cm), large (around 170cm), and extra-large (180cm).

This is the Western-style side, with a twin bed setup. There’s space in front of the beds too, enough to open up a small suitcase.

Between the 8-mat Japanese room and the Western room, there’s plenty of space! Wi-Fi was included too, with a solid signal.

Bathroom and Sink

The bath, sink, and toilet are all separate, independent spaces.

It has an older build, with some rust and wear visible here and there, but it was within an acceptable range.

The bath comes with shampoo, conditioner, and body soap, but with the spacious Japanese- and Western-style large communal baths available, you’re obviously never going to use the in-room bath.

Large Communal Bath at Hotel Towadaso

On the way to the large communal bath there’s a striking indoor waterfall, 15m tall and 5m wide, with a steady rush of hot-spring water cascading down from the second floor — the sound alone is calming. Kids would probably love it.

The large communal bath is, as you can see, quite spacious — this is the Western-style version.

If you’re someone who’d normally hesitate at a crowded hot spring, the sheer size here means you likely won’t even notice other guests.

The Japanese-style large communal bath has a yagura tower in the middle and also includes a jacuzzi.

The men’s and women’s baths swap nightly, so you can enjoy both the Japanese- and Western-style baths over the course of one stay!

Open-Air Bath at Hotel Towadaso

It’s closed in winter due to snowfall, but the open-air bath surrounded by nature feels amazing! The water quality and temperature are just right for a long soak, and an open-air bath is a genuinely rare find among hotels around Lake Towada.

There’s no sauna or private family bath, though.

Dinner at Hotel Towadaso

The dinner venue has semi-private seating with raised, partitioned areas. Dinner runs from 18:00 to 21:00.

Since I went with a more budget-friendly plan, it wasn’t an extravagant, dish-after-dish spread, but it covered the classics — sushi, sashimi, and a hot pot.

For an extra charge, there were also options like A5-grade Towada beef cooked on a hot stone plate, Oirase garlic pork on a hot plate, grilled Towada lake trout, and hairy crab.

Just note that extra dishes need to be reserved at least 3 days in advance.

Breakfast at Hotel Towadaso

Breakfast is buffet-style, though there isn’t really a standout menu, local specialty, or regional dish — it’s more in line with what you’d get at a standard business hotel breakfast buffet, with a little extra.

Final Impressions of My Stay

This time my top priority was a hotel with good access to the popular sightseeing spots of Lake Towada, the Oirase Gorge, and Choshi Falls, and just as I’d researched beforehand, the location was excellent. The hot spring was gentle on the skin, and the spacious Japanese- and Western-style large baths plus the open-air bath made for a genuinely relaxing stay. A sauna would have made it even better.

The whole building has some age and an old-fashioned feel to it, but it was kept clean throughout, and nothing about it was particularly off-putting.

The food was ordinary rather than a lavish onsen-ryokan dinner, but at ¥7,500 per person on a weekday, it’s genuinely great value, and I’d happily come back again if the opportunity comes up.

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About the author

Joe

I love hotels, hot springs, and saunas across the whole country!!
I’ve made it to 40 prefectures so far.
Around 100 hotel stays and 50+ saunas visited, and the count keeps climbing.
My hobbies are travel, golf, snowboarding, saunas, and the gym.

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