Hi — I’m Tabiiku. I travel around Japan with my daughter on the principle that experience is the best thing you can give a child. We loved FUFU Kawaguchiko so much that we went looking for the best-reviewed hotel in the group, which is FUFU Nikko. This whole trip was planned backwards from “I want to stay at FUFU Nikko”.
The route was: Liberty Kinu (the ordinary Tobu Nikko line) → Edo Wonderland Nikko Edomura → FUFU Nikko → SPACIA X home. Slow, unhurried, and with plenty for a child to do. It worked beautifully and I would copy it exactly.
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Getting to Nikko from Tokyo
I know very little about trains, and I was simply going to book a limited express seat — and then discovered that SPACIA X, the much-talked-about sightseeing train, runs this exact route.
SPACIA X is beautifully designed, and because the concept is “a suite on rails” there is a real range of seating: the very large Cockpit Suite, the private Compound compartments, and the Cockpit Lounge, which is sofa seating that feels like sitting in a cafe.
The Cockpit Suite was clearly unbookable, so it came down to Compound or Cockpit Lounge. I picked the private Compound so my daughter could do as she liked, and I am very glad I did.
- Compound — for people who want a private space. With children, this is the one.
- Cockpit Lounge — open and airy, with free run of the attached cafe. For the greedy.
If you are in a standard seat, using the cafe in the Cockpit Lounge is hard work: after boarding you have to fight for an online numbered ticket, and not everyone gets one. Passengers in Compound, Cockpit Lounge and Cockpit Suite simply show their ticket and can take food and drink away whenever they like. One caveat: Compound and Cockpit Suite are in car 1 and the cafe is in car 6, so it is the length of the train and you will not do it more than once.
Booking is brutal. Reservations open online at 9am one month ahead, and you should assume the private compartments are gone by 9:03. Register with the ticketing site in advance — the time you lose creating an account on the day is the difference between getting one and not.
The Cockpit Suite is a lost cause: travel agencies appear to sell it as a train-plus-ryokan package, and it was already gone on almost every service the moment general booking opened.
Edo Wonderland Nikko Edomura
I had read that it gets busy and arrived braced for it, but on a weekend in March — helped, I suspect, by the cold — it was quiet. My daughter is a Demon Slayer fan and was delighted just by the streets. I did get the running order wrong, though, so let me save you from my mistake.
The attractions divide into three: hands-on experiences, theatre shows, and food.
Experiences. If your child is around lower primary school age, the first thing to do is the Child Samurai experience. It sits at the very far end of the village, runs at fixed times, and each session is capped — so make it your first priority. I confused it with the Ninja experience, rushed off to the Ninja experience instead, enjoyed it thoroughly, and ran out of time for the samurai one entirely.
That said, the Ninja experience is the village’s signature attraction, so do not leave without it either. It works as a stamp rally, and to find the stamps you have to work through mazes and various pieces of training. Lower primary school age is the sweet spot.
The archery range may be a little difficult for younger children, though the enthusiasm is never lacking. And the senbei rice cracker grilling — 250 yen a sheet — lets you toast your own over charcoal and brush it with soy sauce at the end. It suits every age.
Theatre. Ninja Theatre, the Minamimachi Magistrate’s Office and Wakamatsuya each run twenty to thirty minute shows around twice a day. You cannot enter or leave partway through, so check the timetable. We saw Wakamatsuya, which is set in an oiran house — I chose it because my daughter likes Daki, the oiran-themed demon in Demon Slayer. Verdict: a little difficult for a child, but the adults loved it, and the audience skewed adult. One warning: Wakamatsuya makes an audience member the star of the show, so any man who looks like a good sport should brace himself.
Food. Everything from street stalls to sit-down restaurants, and all of it was good. We followed our noses to yakitori, grilled squid legs and miso dengaku. The most popular place seemed to be the soba restaurant Yabu, which had a queue at lunchtime.
One practical warning: almost everywhere in the village is cash only. Bring plenty.
FUFU Nikko: the room
FUFU Nikko was close to perfect as a place to stay. The room, the attentiveness, the food — all of it.
The living room and bedroom are separate, and there is a small raised platform space in the living room which became my daughter’s favourite spot. There is a large onsen bath in the room, and the changing area has underfloor heating. The fridge contents are free, and when the iced rose tea runs out they make more and bring it. There is loungewear you can wear anywhere in the hotel, plus a warm haori to go over it. The care in the details made it an extremely comfortable place to be.
FUFU Nikko: the food
Dinner and breakfast are both Japanese-Western hybrids, built on local produce and cooked with real skill. Children get a single plate.
The service around the food was what stayed with me. When my daughter finished early, they came over to ask whether we would like the adults’ dessert brought to the room instead. Thinking about how a child is feeling, not just the adults, counts for a great deal with me.
FUFU Nikko: everything else
The service was flawless from check-in to check-out, so allow me to go through it.
Check-in was smooth even though I think the hotel was full. The check-in space is designed so that each group is effectively in its own room and you never run into other guests. The first thing the member of staff who greeted us said was my daughter’s name, followed by “I love your hair” — she had learned it in advance. My daughter was thrilled. While we waited, she was eyeing the strawberries on the menu, and someone came over to ask if we would like to order anything. We had Tochigi’s famous Tochiaika strawberries, which were superb.
Most guests probably use the bath in their room, but I love a communal bath so I went. The care continued: towels and amenities are all provided there, so you carry nothing, and in the changing room there are free drinks and ice cream. Why is ice cream after an onsen so good? And there was no sign announcing it as a service — it was simply there, taken for granted, which impressed me enormously. Naturally there was nobody else there, so I had the place to myself. Both the indoor bath and the crisp, cold open-air one were wonderful.
The only thing I would flag is that the outdoor corridors get cold. Everything else was, to my mind, a perfect stay.
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