"With his cockateil perched on his back, Isao Sawa sees guests off from the front desk of Sawanoya."
Asahi: Foreign guests kick back at unpretentious Tokyo inn
Long known in the tourist industry as the purveyor par excellence of hospitality to non-Japanese, Isao Sawa, who runs the Sawanoya Ryokan in Tokyo's shitamachi old downtown area, has had about 20 titles conferred on him..[t]he most recent accolade, "Shitamachi Charisma of Hospitality to Foreigners"
...One Sunday last year...the guests included American newlyweds who were staying for 29 days, an exchange student from Finland and six people from France who wanted to get off Japan's tourist track..."Until quite recently, 90 percent of our guests were foreign," Sawa says. "Lately, though, we've been seeing more Japanese, so now it's about 80 percent foreign, 20 percent Japanese...A Japanese inn with no Japanese guests would be rather strange."..."We've had tons of trouble-our different ways of using the baths and toilets, of drinking tea or coffee, their tendency to haggle over prices," he says. "Until about three years ago, I was ready any number of times to just close the place down. But then you start to think-every country has its own culture, its own customs. I came to realize there was no malice on their part."
http://www.tctv.ne.jp/members/sawanoya
See also FG Thread: Ryokan want more FG money
[/floatl]There's a new book out entitled "Why is Sawanoya Ryokan so popular with foreigners?" Owner Isao Sawa is quoted saying that there are many ryokan around the country which could cultivate the foreign tourist market so their failure to do so is Japan's loss.
