Zaborin

Zaborin stands in a secluded birch wood in Hanazono, outside Kutchan, about seven minutes by car from the Hanazono lifts. The architect Makoto Nakayama and the creative director Shouya Grigg completed it in 2015 as a contemporary reading of the ryokan, and the name, which means roughly to sit and forget in the woods, sets the tone. There are fifteen villa suites, each laid out differently: washitsu villas with futons on tatami, yoshitsu villas with Western beds, and some with an extra tatami room for small families.

Every villa has two baths, one indoors and one covered outdoors, fed from the ryokan's own volcanic spring, which rises from almost a kilometre below ground and runs through the baths with no hot water added. Dinner is the kita kaiseki of the Hokkaido-born chef Yoshihiro Seno, a northern reading of the Kyoto tradition built on local produce, venison he prepares himself and the finds of an in-house forager, served in an intimate dining room. Guests staying four nights or more are given one robatayaki dinner at the irori hearth.

The shared rooms are made for doing very little. The library mixes Japanese classics in English with European favourites in Japanese, the living room's floor to ceiling windows frame Mount Yotei above a small lake, and the bar, made from a single piece of wood, stocks local whisky. A footbath waits in the central courtyard. The ryokan collects guests free of charge at Kutchan Station and in the ski season runs a shuttle to the Hanazono Ski Centre.