Hotel Yokikan on Yuya Bay in Nagato

A hotel above the bay, named after Yang Guifei

Hotel Yōkikan stands on a rise directly above Yuya Bay, with the shallows below the windows and the rice fields at the head of the bay flat in the distance. The building has two wings, eight floors at the tallest point. Some rooms are renovated and some not but both are kept immaculately.

The name of the hotel comes from Yang Guifei, consort to the Tang emperor Xuanzong. Local legend has her escaping China by boat and coming ashore on the peninsula across the bay. The five-ring stone said to be her grave is at Nison-in, now the Yōkihi no Sato park, 15 minutes from the hotel.

The hotel carries the story through the building: the two bath floors are named after her and after the emperor, and a robed figure in Tang court dress stands among the rocks of the garden below the lobby.

A corner room on the seventh floor

Ours was in the Asanagi wing. The layout is the standard Japanese-Western one: a tatami room with a low table and legless chairs, then sliding doors through to a bedroom with twin beds and a window the full width of the room. Beyond the beds there is a sitting area with a rocking chair at the glass.

Being on the corner means windows on two sides, one down the length of the bay and one back across it, the second behind a shoji screen you can slide shut. The ceiling in the tatami room is coffered timber with square paper lanterns hanging from it.

The two wings are named for the calms at either end of the day, Asanagi and Yūnagi. Ours faced the morning. The sunset rooms are in the Yūnagi wing, so ask for that side if you want the evening rather than the morning.

Baths at the edge of the water

There are two bath floors, Gensō no Yu (玄宗の湯) and Yōkihi no Yu (楊貴妃の湯), and the men's and women's sides swap morning and afternoon, so one night gets you both. Each has a long indoor bath along the window and an open-air bath outside it, right at the rail with the bay below.

The spring is alkaline, clear and odourless, at pH 9.8, known here as a bijin no yu for how soft it leaves the skin. Both floors have a sauna.

Welcome drink at the sake bar

The cosy bar, Umi to Tsuki (海と月) offers different Yamaguchi specialty sakes. Along one wall stand two refrigerated servers holding the different bottles, with a printed list naming each one, running on tokens. (similar to the Ponshukan sake vending machines in Niigata).

The welcome drink that comes per stay covers two of them free, and after that you can buy tokens at the machine and pour your own. There are also free snacks to go with it. The servers only run from 15:00-18:00 in the afternoon, so it is worth being back at the hotel before dinner.

Dinner in the restaurant, breakfast overlooking the bay

There are two dinner plans. The kaiseki is served in the private rooms at Asai (あさ井). We took the cheaper one, which puts you in the hotel's restaurant, Amanoyu (あまのゆ), with an allowance to spend on anything you like from the menu, food and drink both. We ate and drank our way through it, including two Yamaguchi sakes: a junmai muroka from Chōmonkyō and a bottle of Tōyō Bijin.

Breakfast is a set menu, a tray of small dishes with rice and a pot on a burner, brought to a table by the window with a bank of red-leaved hedge between the glass and the shore.

A base for the Nagato coast

We used the hotel as a base. Most of what draws people to this corner of Yamaguchi is a short drive away: Senjōjiki, the grass plateau on the cliffs above the Sea of Japan; Motonosumi Shrine and its run of red torii down the headland; the Tsunoshima bridge; the rice terraces on the slopes above the coast.

Akiyoshidai is further inland, far enough to need most of a day but easily done from here. We drove out to the karst the morning after we arrived because the forecast was clear, then took the coast the following day once it clouded over. Staying a few days in one area buys you that. Everything here is within reach of everything else, so you reorder the days around the forecast instead of giving up a walk.

We stayed at two other places in the area. Otani Sanso, inland at Nagato Yumoto Onsen, is the polished option, and Tenjuku no Mori Keigetsu is a small forest ryokan nearer Akiyoshidai. We would go back to any of the three: it depends whether you want the sea, the river or the forest outside your room window.