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. This is a critical one, so fair warning: the theme park next door was wonderful and the hotel was not.
Nearby: Nasu Highland Park
We spent the first day at Nasu Highland Park. My daughter had just turned seven and was finally tall enough for a lot of the rides, and she loves theme parks, so this was our first visit.
It was excellent. I want to go back.
The main thing is that it is empty — the longest wait for anything was about ten minutes. You might assume a regional park like this means tired, neglected rides, but the number and the quality are both surprisingly high, running from proper roller coasters to unusual physical, participatory attractions. There is a full day here.
Two warnings. Winter is genuinely, seriously cold — bring heat packs, a scarf, gloves, boots, honestly you could wear ski gear. It was snowing and below freezing when we went and I shivered all day. And the outdoor coasters suspend operation in rain, so aim for good weather. Most of the outdoor coasters we had been looking forward to were closed (we still had a great day).
A few that stood out:
- SHINPI — an indoor roller coaster, roughly a gentler Space Mountain
- MOGURA — you explore a cave-like maze, touching stones to a wristband to “mine” them
- XD Dark Ride — 3D glasses and a gun, shooting enemies, in a Resident Evil vein
- Dinosaur Laboratory — dodge lasers and hit the switch in time to save the dinosaurs
Everything is quiet, so try all of it. Note that the park closes for the season from late January through February. It is presumably cool up here in summer, and I would like to come back then.
RISONARE Nasu: the room
Hoshino Resorts is well known for taking over older properties and renovating them. Before RISONARE Nasu, this was Niki Club, a luxury inn I loved and visited twice before my daughter was born.
Niki Club was full marks on everything — service, food, facilities — so some of my disappointment is the drop from that. But I will say plainly: I think this renovation has made it worse.
The buildings are still Niki Club’s, but the room interiors now feel a little cheap.
POKO POKO, the cafe with the netted play structure, is a new addition. POKO POKO itself is fine — but the layout has clearly been bent to funnel you through it, and access to the annexe is dreadful as a result. It is a long walk from reception and the communal bath to the annexe rooms, and the path had not been cleared of snow at all. My father slipped on the ice and fell — despite being told at check-in that the paths were cleared. At the very least they need to be gritting it; it is genuinely dangerous.
In the Niki Club days there was a direct corridor to reception. It is now marked “Private” and closed off, which I cannot read as anything other than a change for the worse.
There are two buildings, the main one and the annexe. If you want to use the onsen or eat at the SHAKI SHAKI restaurant, ask for a main building room as close to reception as possible. If you are happy with the bath in your room and plan to eat at OTTO SETTE, the annexe is more convenient.
The rooms themselves are clean, and because the underlying Niki Club architecture is so good, they are comfortable to be in.
RISONARE Nasu: the food
We had the SHAKI SHAKI buffet for dinner and breakfast in the same room. Honestly, it fell a long way short.
Nasu produces wonderful vegetables and fruit and almost none of that came through. The range was also extremely narrow. There were a lot of families whose children were behaving badly and staff took no notice.
The dinner buffet mains were cheese fondue and roast beef, neither of which was pitched at children at all: the fondue is heavy with blue cheese and quite pungent, and the roast beef was chewy. For a hotel that is so obviously used by families, that is a strange choice.
Within the same group, RISONARE Atami had abundant seafood and a wide menu, and Yatsugatake had an overwhelming range. This felt like about half of that.
And for all the “strawberry fair!” signage, the fruit at breakfast was orange, apple and banana. A visible bit of cost-cutting.
RISONARE Nasu: activities
The RISONARE brand usually means a strong programme of activities for children. This is the laziest one I have seen from them.
At POKO POKO they advertise walnut candle making, swag making, twig lampshades and so on, but for the price you are essentially handed the materials and left to it. The value is not there.
The stone-oven pizza making was good, though. A member of staff taught my daughter properly how to stretch the dough and arrange the toppings, and they bake it for you at the end, so it tastes good too.
One tip: sign-ups open at 11am and there is a queue of people wanting to do it before the noon check-out. Hover near the cashier from about 10:50 so you get an early slot — the oven and the instructor have limited capacity, and a late number means standing around waiting.
The netted play structure at POKO POKO is small but was popular with younger children. My seven-year-old still got about thirty minutes out of it.
One more thing: the other guests were not a great crowd, and there are several points where you end up in close quarters with them, which counted against it for me.
None of the things that make RISONARE good, none of the potential of the Niki Club site realised, and the same narrow, unimpressive food. I would not go back.
That is my critical take on RISONARE Nasu. Next year I will be looking for somewhere new in Nasu-Shiobara.
Check Hoshino Resorts RISONARE Nasu
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