We were blown away when we last visited Myoken Ishiharaso, but somehow, our stay last week was even more magical. From the enchanting settings to the Onsen quality to the incredible kaiseki cuisine to the professional, friendly and attentive staff, this is genuinely one of the iconic Onsen ryokans in all of Japan. One nice bonus - location wise, it's a mere 15 minutes by taxi from Kagoshima Airport, which is served by four domestic carriers and is a mere 2-hour flight from Tokyo Haneda or an even shorter 75 minute flight from Osaka Itami. Yes, you can easily do an overnight trip to Ishiharaso - just make sure to get there by 2PM (check-in time is an hour earlier than most ryokans), as you'll definitely want to maximize your time there. The thing we learned on our second trip had to do with the Onsen quality. We already knew that the hot springs at the property came straight from the nearby source, all baths were free-flowing (and overflowing), the overflow onsen were discharged and never recirculated. While it's not uncommon to have ryokans offer such quality, many of the high-end properties do provide it, and even in the rooms, like Ishiharaso does. But the goodness does not stop there. While many places call their onsen ”authentic,” Ishiharaso takes things a bit further: the precious hot springs nutrients are never diluted by adding tap water (which is often the case as a means to cool down the hot springs), have no exposure to air/oxygen until it runs into the bath, Alfa Laval (a French company) heat exchangers are used to control the temperature - it is a system that takes only thermal energy using mountain water. For these reasons and more, the onsen is distributed as it is from the source without being in contact with the air or adding a single drop of water to the hot springs. It's pure goodness at Myoken Ishiharaso. Also, the size of the bathtubs everywhere - in the rooms, in the communal baths and the rental baths (that can be rented privately by guests staying at the ryokan) - are determined based on the advise from experts based on the principle of one turn per hour - in order to meet hygiene standards for bathtubs. In other words, a bathtub that fills up in an hour is ideal. If you make a bathtub bigger than that, you will need to dilute it with water, circulate the water, and chlorinate it. Therefore, the size of the each of the onsen baths at Ishiharaso was decided according to the amount of onsen it can pipe into each bath. Finally - the in-room onsen are drained, meticulously scrubbed clean, and then refilled after each group of guests depart each room. They do the same daily for the communal and rental onsen baths as well. Myoken Ishiharaso's hot springs are called ”Bijin no Yu” (spring of beauty) thanks to bicarbonate spring (hydrogen carbonate and carbon dioxide) and metasilicic acid (a form of silicon dioxide, aka silica.) Hot springs with hydrogen carbinate are also composed of sodium, calcium and magnesium. Bicarbonate s
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