Good: Good onsen (both indoor and open air), nice lobby, big canteen with nice view, good variety of international buffet

Drawback: No email response, front desk staff hardly speaks English, water heater in room is not working well.

Note: Free bus from JR Kushiro station to hotel provided. Transport leaves bus terminal (besides JR station) at 2pm. As confirmed with the hotel staff, send email (in English) to make reservation through the hotel website will do. Kindly update me if any of you successfully make the reservation. Thanks.

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Room stayed: Double room (western) at old wing (Crystal)

The hotel is about 1.5 hours of bus journey from JR Kushiro Station. It is located in front of Lake Akan. This hotel is very popular, because there are many tourists (local and tour group of foreigners) everyday. However I never see free and easy foreigner visiting here as I did during my stay. Maybe is not yet the peak season to visit Lake Akan in Nov.

The hotel is big and grand. It has a nice lobby. It comprises new wing (Shangri-La) and old wing (Crystal). If I am correct, rooms at new wing are all Japanese style. They are very new and nice. The room I stayed is at old wing. Room looked antique. It is big and clean. I am lucky to have the room with view of Lake Akan, some more paying single occupancy rate for a double room.

The window can be fully opened without any obstruction by fixed glass window. So you can take nice photo from the room.

Free snack provided is tasty. Room equips with good heater to warm you up. There is an additional heater in the room. Toiletries (toothbrush and razor) are provided. More than enough yukata (with different sizes) and towel set were prepared for my room. Water heater in room did not work properly. If you want to take shower during cold day, go to onsen is suggested.

The canteen at ground floor is very big to occupy huge crowd. You can view Lake Akan from the canteen. International buffet consists of good variety of food, so there will be no problem for vegetarian taker like me. One of the bread + whipped cream impressed me much. The rest of the food is generally nice. What a pity that no nice ice cream is served as expected.

Both indoor and open air onsen are fantastic. For indoor onsen, there are water jet and sauna but not operated all the time. For open air onsen, there is Jacuzzi. A must try because of the nice scenery. Note that open air onsen is closed at night (forgot the exact timing, sorry).

The only concern is the onsen water temperature is relatively too high (50C). It is really very hot as I 1st tried on it. Skin feels like burning. But the temperature was just nice when I tried again during morning and noon time the next 2 days.

There is also a swimming pool at the roof top. Too bad it is closed from Nov. But the official picture from hotel website looked nice and I do believe it is truth. Game arcade available at the basement.

As summary, the hotel is a good choice. But what disappoints me is no email response from the hotel when I enquired about free pick up service through their website. I only found out the free bus service when I arrived Kushiro Bus Terminal. I was lucky to travel alone and the bus is not yet fully reserved, so the driver let me to board it.

Another thing that surprises me is that all the front desk staffs don’t speak English. There are many tourists from China/Taiwan/HK so I do expect that they can speak simple English, some more the hotel is so grand. Found hard to communicate with them. I should have tried to ask if they speak Mandarin instead. I did ask them the way to book a seat for free pick up at JR Kushiro. They told me to send a reservation message through their website, in English. Hopefully this really works.

Another choice is to book the trip to the hotel when you arrive Sapporo. There was brochure (in Japanese) promoting trip package of 3 days 2 nights + bus from Sapporo. Limited period only but it does help you to save much on transportation.

This hotel was actually very nice - not run down like many of the other similar hotels I have stayed in. Nice rooms, great onsen (especially the rooftop onsen and jacuzzi), and very good dinner and breakfast buffet ("viking style" as the Japanese like to say).

To cap it all off, we were lucky to have a room overlooking Lake Akan and in view of the volcano Mt Oakan.

I stayed in this hotel in Feb 2009 (sorry TA, can you help me backdate this?), had meant to post a review but didn't get around to doing it. During my trip then, I stayed in about 6 hotels, but this is the only one that left an impression till this date - that's how much I liked it. The lighted mural on the ceiling lobby was gorgeous, the hotel is situated right in front of the lake, we had our delicious kaiseki meal in our room where we could watch the winter lake festival fireworks in nice warm comfort, and the rooftop onsen was absolutely fantastic - imagine soaking in hot water, surrounded by snow, watching sunrise over the lake. Buffet breakfast was alright (I loved the shishamo though!), great variety but the quality was usually just average. The hotel arranged complimentary transportation for us to-and-fro the nearby ski ground, and after checkout, also sent us to the Lake Akan Bus Terminal upon request as my friend had hurt her knee trying to ski the day before. Only complaint was the big group of taiwan/china tourists making lots of noise in the lobby during their check-in, but I suppose that's unavoidable in most major, non-overpriced hotels.