Very close to Nagano Station. You exit out of the station. Find the overpass that takes you across to Don Quijote Discount Store. There is an escalator that takes you down to the street level. Turn right. You'll walk past the Alpico Bus Ticket Office. This is where you buy the bus tickets to go to the three shrines in Togakushi (bus number 70, approximately one bus per hour). Keep walking until you see a Chinese restaurant. The hotel is the next building. We had the standard twin room. Room size is OK as expected. The decor in our room more than made up for it. That was a really nice surprise. I love Fujisan and wood-block prints and we were going to visit Hokusai Museum in nearby Obuse the next day! Breakfast area is in front of the lifts. The hotel has a business hotel feel to it. I really enjoyed the buffet breakfast (probably my second favourite). Of all the places we stayed in on this trip, this is the only place with noodles, five grain rice and Asian greens. The Asian greens were served at room temperature with some special sauce, not plain. The sweet bread roll was very yummy. And if I remembered correctly, it even had apple cider vinegar! It also seemed that if you needed to, you could take breakfast with you as the hotel provided takeaway containers. The soup was already in takeaway containers. We definitely need more than two nights to explore Nagano!
Our first experience in a ryokan so we had no idea what to expect. The staff were very friendly and answered any queries we had. We were travelling with another couple and we opted for the deluxe room with tatami area but requested western beds as opposed to futons. They were quite hard but that seemed to be the case in all the other places we stayed too so maybe that’s the norm. The bedroom and tatami room were as warm or cool as you decided but the hallway, toilet and shower/wet room had no heating so were pretty chilly. The western rooms, where our friends were, were all warm as recently completed. We opted for both breakfast and dinner for the 3 nights as we weren’t sure what would be in the area. Both meals start and finish early but we had plans for each day so this wasn’t an issue. The food was excellent and plentiful and the serving staff were lovely.