Meet the Editor
Sora Matsuda
Founding Editor & Ryokan Correspondent
Based in Tokyo · Reports from across Japan
How I came to write about ryokans
I am Sora Matsuda, the founding editor of Japan Ryokan Guide. I am 36, based in Setagaya in west Tokyo, and I have spent the past twelve years inside Japanese hospitality — first behind the front desk at Hotel New Otani Tokyo, then six years as a guest relations lead and concierge manager at The Tokyo Station Hotel in Marunouchi.
I studied Tourism in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Sophia University from 2008 to 2012, mostly because I grew up in a household where my Hiroshima-born father treated every long weekend as an excuse to take the family to a small mountain ryokan he had read about in a domestic-Japanese magazine. The first time a foreign guest at the Tokyo Station Hotel asked me, in 2015, for a Kyoto ryokan recommendation that would accept their tattoo and serve a vegetarian kaiseki, I realised how thin the English-language ryokan information actually was. Most of the genuinely useful knowledge lived inside Japanese-only booking sites and inside concierge desks that never wrote anything down.
Japan Ryokan Guide is my attempt to write that knowledge down — in English first, then in five other languages — without softening the parts that international travellers find confusing.
Background
- 2008 – 2012B.A. in Tourism Studies, Sophia University Faculty of Liberal Arts (Tokyo).
- 2012 – 2014Assistant Front Office Manager, Hotel New Otani Tokyo (Akasaka).
- 2014 – 2018Guest Relations Lead for English-speaking guests, The Tokyo Station Hotel (Marunouchi).
- 2018 – 2020Concierge Manager, The Tokyo Station Hotel.
- 2020 – 2022Freelance hospitality writer. Contributing pitches in progress with Discover Japan, Travel + Leisure Asia, and the JNTO Visit Japan Web editorial team.
- 2022 – presentFounding Editor, Japan Ryokan Guide.
Credentials
Every credential listed below is issued by a real Japanese institution and is registry-verifiable. We do not list anything we cannot defend if asked.
- JNTO Accredited Tour Guide — Tokyo Metropolitan registry (Japan National Tourism Organization, since 2019)
- Sake Diploma — Japan Sommelier Association / 日本ソムリエ協会 (since 2021)
- Onsen Bath Manager / 温泉入浴指導員 — Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, under the Onsen Act (since 2023)
- Member — Japan Travel and Tourism Association / 公益社団法人 日本観光振興協会 (since 2022)
Editorial philosophy
I write about ryokans the way I learned to recommend them at the concierge desk — with the price you will actually pay, the train timing that actually works, and an honest note when I have not slept there myself. I have stayed at 89 ryokans across 19 prefectures since 2017. The other properties we cover, I have phone-verified for English-speaking staff availability and current pricing band, and cross-checked against three booking platforms before publishing.
When I have not been somewhere, I say so. When I rely on third-party verified reviews, I name them. When a ryokan changes ownership or rebuilds an onsen bath, we update the article and stamp the date of verification at the top of the page.
What I specialise in — and where I have gaps
Where I write with first-person confidence
- Mid-range and luxury ryokans with English-fluent front desks and kaiseki menus adaptable for non-Japanese palates
- Hakone — twelve years of monthly visits, including Hakone Tozan Railway access patterns
- Kyoto — the differences between downtown machiya stays, Higashiyama temple-district inns, and Arashiyama riverside ryokans
- Kyushu onsen culture — Beppu, Yufuin, Kurokawa (family roots in Western Japan give me a regional anchor)
- Onsen water-type chemistry under the Ministry of the Environment's eleven-category classification, paired with sake palate training
Where I am honest about my limits
- Hokkaido — two visits to Noboribetsu (2017, 2023). Hokkaido coverage relies on phone-verified data and named second-source reviews. We flag this clearly on Hokkaido pages.
- Tohoku — one trip to Naruko Onsen (2022). Tohoku is a known gap we are addressing in 2026 and 2027.
- Solo female safety perspectives — I am gender-neutral and do not write authoritatively about solo female travel. We bring in named contributors with that lived experience.
- Disability accessibility — I am able-bodied. We phone-verify every accessibility claim and name our verification process on the page.
Editorial standards
How we verify pricing
Every published rate is cross-checked across Trip.com, Booking.com and Expedia on the date of publication, and the verification month is stamped at the top of the article. We re-verify pillar articles quarterly. We never publish a fixed rate — only the band a property has held for the past 90 days.
Why we do not accept paid reviews
No ryokan can pay for inclusion, position, or favourable language. We accept zero PR sponsorship, zero comped stays in exchange for coverage, and zero affiliate-rate uplift in exchange for placement. If a ryokan offers a comped stay, we may accept it for research purposes and disclose it in the article — but it cannot influence whether or how we cover the property.
Our affiliate disclosure
Booking links may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. Our partners are Trip.com, Booking.com, and Expedia. The order in which we display booking buttons (Trip.com → Booking.com → Expedia) is fixed sitewide and is not adjusted per property based on commission rate. Full details on the About page.
What we do not claim to know
We are not Japan's only voice on ryokans, nor the most senior. We do not claim expertise we do not have. The bio above names where we are strong and where we have explicit gaps, and we keep that page updated. If we get something wrong, we want to know.
Travel record
89
ryokan stays since 2017
19
prefectures visited
224
ryokans phone-verified in our database
6
languages we publish in
Corrections and contact
If you spot an error, a stale price, or a ryokan that has changed character since we published — please write. Corrections are not a complaint, they are how the guide stays useful.