SMH: Staying in the grand-old hotels of Japan
The British author Victoria Manthorpe is quoted in A Traveller's History of Japan, writing of the "trials" that confronted Western visitors to Japan in the early days after its seclusion (trials that can still deter tourists to this day). "The food was difficult, if not downright unpalatable," Manthorpe writes. "One needed an interpreter, a guide or both. If you ventured into the backwaters you would find yourself staying in teahouses with paper walls, no heating, no furniture and no privacy." The Japanese being the Japanese, with the guidance of foreign missionaries, a solution was soon sought. A network of grand Western-style hotels, festooned with Japanese architectural influences, was built in sublime locations not too far removed from the major cities and transport links
...Yet it's still possible to travel around the country's main island, Honshu, from Tokyo and Kyoto and beyond, staying at some or all - depending on your finances - of Japan's five oldest, most historic and eccentric Western-style lodgings. At each of them, just like the "gaijin" travellers of the past, from Rudyard Kipling to Charlie Chaplin, General MacArthur to John Lennon, there's the opportunity to sleep in Western beds (not on the tatami of ryokans or in the sterility of the modern hotels) while at the same time experiencing an authentic and distinctive Japanese ambience...more...
