Hotel Green Plaza Karuizawa, wrapped neatly in crisp fresh mountainside air and landscaped splendor is a family friendly hotel offering the many joys of Japan. In every season there is something for everyone. In Fall you can enjoy the vibrant autumn foliage, in Spring you can take delight in the cherry blossoms, in Winter you can play in the fresh woolen snow and in Summer relax by the bright beaming flowers.
The wonder of Japan’s nature provides an elegant backdrop to Hotel Green Plaza Karuizawa’s Tudor style architecture. The expansiveness of the hotel spans over three buildings: the Main building, the connection building and the Princess Court building. This hotel also specializes in accommodating young children and delivers an uncompromising sense of security, space and freedom for your child. They have rooms especially designed to accommodate babies with conveniences such as air sanitizer machine, specially formulated diaper bins and close to the ground furniture for safety. Additionally, Hotel Green Plaza Karuizawa will entertain unruly children with multiple playing rooms. Thus, this hotel is the Number 1 hotel in Japan to bring babies.
You can also relax in the hotel’s spacious and tranquil open-air hot spring, brimming with soft golden water abundant in minerals mild enough for the elderly and the young alike. These hot springs, naturally sourced beneath the earth at 72.9 Degrees Celsius, can be enjoyed in rock basins, cypress tubs or in a man-made cave,and will leave you feeling refreshed and pampered; and at the same time it allows you to experience this unique custom exclusive to only Japan.
According to demand, the hotel can accommodate up to 1500 people within their 450 rooms. Most rooms feature either twin or double beds, and all rooms are equipped with a tatami living area, a TV, a safe, a fridge and a private bathroom. In the Connection building there are a few ‘maisonette rooms’ which is a split level room fitted with a western style bedroom on the upper floor, and a traditional tatami living room area on the lower floor. Also, did I mention that they also have a small hotel for dogs? The Dog Hotel permits sharing your room with your beloved pooch, and it is even equipped with a small spa dedicated for dogs.
The hotel also offers you a feast full of flavor, where you can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in your choice of the five restaurants available: Plaisir, C’est la Vie, Asama, Shirakaba and Edelweiss. The food served at each restaurant is different, one restaurant offers a buffet of both Western and Japanese cuisine and another offers a buffet of Japanese specialty cuisine such as fresh tasty sushi. Both buffets provide guests with generous amounts of food without compromising on taste. Personally, I found it difficult to stop eating even past the point of being full; especially when you can dip marshmallows, strawberries and bananas into a chocolate fountain for dessert – yum! Another restaurant, C’est la Vie, serves French western cuisine. Since I missed Australian food, I chose the dish with Australian beef and I found it to be cooked perfectly; soft, tender and moist and its presentation makes you salivate further.
To burn of all those calories from breakfast and lunch, Hotel Green Plaza Karuizawa offers a plethora of activities ranging from playing tennis in one of their courts, playing golf at their spacious 18 hole golf course dubbed Princeland Golf Club, playing putty golf and hiking every morning at 8:30am. Additionally because the hotel is surrounded by many tall mountains, Hotel Green Plaza Karuizawa proves to be a very popular place to stay for skiing; you can conveniently go to the skiing location on a 30 minute bus trip.
To boot, nature lovers will love to witness the intriguing landscape of Onioshida Park and the hotel offers buses going there at 11:30am every day for 600 yen. Not to mention Japan’s famous ‘Romantic Road’ connects to the hotel; and in autumn the road displays a festive swirl of yellow, orange and red. With such beautiful surrounding nature, it comes as no surprise that the hotel is also popular for wedding ceremonies with a wedding chapel and a horse and carriage nearby. And for the kids, with just a short stroll away from the hotel, you can also spend a laughter-filled day at the Kingdom of Toys.
As it turns out, Hotel Green Plaza Karuizawa is very popular, and so I think it is a good idea to book in advance. If you went to get there from Tokyo Station you can catch the Nagano Bullet Train to Karuizawa Station for one hour. From there you can catch the express bus to the hotel in 50 minutes.
