Hakone, Kanagawa, Japan｜Japanese Cuisine Kadan

My first kaiseki experience - well worth it. We got the 3500 yen "lunch box" option. It was much much better than your standard bento. A 5-course meal, each part beautifully served. And despite my less-than-adventurous palate, I found it all very good. The fried oysters in the main lunch course were excellent. The sashimi course was great as well.

Super fancy course meal that seems to have many traditional Japanese components. While some of the lead up courses were not really fitting of our Western tongues we found the main course to be absolutely amazing! We suggest the beef course as they brought it out on a coal fired skillet for which you could cook it to your perfection. Was some of the most delicious beef and salmon we have ever had.

Gora Kadan is a super fancy ryokan (very expensive), where you will get fantastic service, someone assigned just to your room for dinner and breakfast service (both were excellent). They will pick you up from the train station and can drop you off to the train or the cable car at Gora, and generally do everything they can to help. We got the 'Kadan suite with open-air stone bath"Fuji/Ume"/2 guest(s)' room. It was very big, the bed is technically on a tatami, but it's raised and so plushy that it's actually a super comfortable bed. The facilities are fantastic, they have a nice indoor/outdoor onsen, our room had its own sauna and small private onsen outside, and they have multiple rooms where you can admire the view (it's very nice from the top), relax, and do whatever you fancy. Ok, the price: it was about $1500 for 2 people for our nicer room. We've stayed at a nice ryokan in Nara with very nice breakfast/dinner and onsen (but not private onsen outside the room) for less than $300. Gora Kadan was better for sure, but not 5 times better. Then again, this kind of pricing is not linear, so it's for you to decide how much spare cash you have and where you want to allocate it. If you'd rather pay $4000 for a business class airline ticket than $1500, then portion of that extra $2500 will be much better spent at Gora Kadan. Hope this helps :) As a quick tip, unless you're quite accustomed to Asian food, if you are a westerner you may prefer the wester breakfast option. My taiwanese wife and I had one of each, we were both happy with our respective choice :) Bed: fantastic AC: perfect Noise: quiet Location: close to Gora station, but they will pick you up and drop you off Internet: wireless in the room English: staff spoke excellent english