They cleaned our shoes while we slept.

丁寧 · Teinei · Careful attention given to small things

I found out before I’d even had coffee, which is the only thing that gets me to notice anything before 9am. Our shoes, which I’d kicked off the night before in the state only a day of travel with a four year old can produce, were lined up outside the door. Cleaned. Toes pointing out, ready to leave before we were. Nobody mentioned it. Nobody ever does.

We’d stopped in Takayama on the way, which is one of those towns that’s basically a film set except it’s real and people actually live there. Old wooden streets, sake breweries you can wander into, and Hida beef everywhere, which we obviously had to try because when in Rome, or in this case when in the Japanese Alps eating extremely good cows.

Then on to Fukuji Onsen, deep in Okuhida, Gifu. The ryokan was built from old farmhouses someone had moved here piece by piece and rebuilt. It was November, properly cold, and everything was heated with wood fires. The smell hit you the second you stepped outside, woodsmoke mixed with sulfur from the onsen, which sounds like it shouldn’t work but somehow did. It smelled old, like you were breathing in the building’s history rather than just its air.

Our room had a sunken hearth in the floor, an irori, with a kettle hanging over it. We sat around it for dinner in matching striped yukata, my son discovering grilled fish and deciding immediately it was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

A woman knelt down and explained every dish as it arrived. In Japanese mostly, with the odd English word dropped in wherever she could find one. She did this for every single dish. Nobody decided halfway through that we probably weren’t following anyway and gave up.

There were multiple onsens, including ones you could book privately for the whole family, which we did more than once. Coming back in from wandering around outside, there was always tea and a traditional sweet warming by a fire near the entrance, like they’d been expecting us specifically.

On our last morning we had to leave before breakfast was officially served.

They didn’t just shrug and let us go hungry. They put together a takeaway of onigiri, rice triangles with fillings, wrapped and ready to go.

Fukuji Onsen, Okuhida, Gifu. Built from relocated old farmhouses, irori dining in every room, multiple onsens including private family baths. Stop in Takayama on the way, old town, sake breweries, Hida beef.

Planning a trip to Gifu? We would love to help.