Odd issues booking ryokans

This is more an observation than a question, coming from bookings we are making for our November trip.

First, we have found with a few ryokans and hotels, the kind of room you can book is dependent on the food you will take. ie, for a ryokan in Kyoto we wanted to stay at, the room we like is only available if you take the fancy beef course. Because we were booking for 3 nights, that wasnt an option as it is almost too much for one night. So in the end, to get breakfast only we are limited to one particular room, which I am sure will be nice anyway.

Similarly for the Hikone Castle Spa resort, you have particular rooms available for particular packages, food and treats like spa, or lake activities, or night illumination (for the time we are there). There are probably 20 packages plus to choose from, only some of which you can get with the castle view room that we like.

And that brings me to the second issue, when we were trying to book the room for a few nights, the page required us to put in our details in "Furigana" which we had never heard of (but it is a thing). In the end we gave up and booked elsewhere, because we couldnt find an email address for the hotel itself online.

So room choice restricted to food and other packages, and Furigana needed to book. First time we have come across either of those...

There are issues with the reservation system in Japan. Even though I can read and write Japanese, I can do furigana, I still cannot reserve. One of many problems is where they ask for your phone number: if you don’t have a phone in Japan the system returns an error message (they expect everybody to have a mobile phone in Japan). Most ryokans seem to use the same software algorithm, probably all designed by one company.

One time I was able to reserve a ryokan in Miyajima only by writing to them via e-mail.

So, I use “universal” booking site like Agoda and Expedia to reserve ryokan rooms.

The furigana piece I can understand easily enough - the inn would want to know the correct reading of your name kanji as it can be difficult where people have unusual or uncommon readings. While furigana (the small kana appearing above kanji) is more common for younger Japanese or useful for people (like me) with limited reading ability (the phonetic reading can help understanding) it is also used elsewhere - official forms is where I strike it often (write name and then write name in kana).
As for the room/package issue - I am sure some ryokan do that, but to have the same meal package three nights in a row gets a bit tiresome. I recall a place I stayed last November on Sado Island where we booked a package, but were able to change the meal for the second night. In the places where ryokan booking sites list out tons of different packages, sometimes it is easier to write to the inn and ask what the options are to get around the limitations of whatever booking site/structure they are using.

To me, who is a local resident and whose first language is Japanese, all that has been the norm, so I thank the OP to have enlightened me. As many may know, it hasn't been a long time since Japan started aiming to increase foreign visitors, and a lot of service is yet to catch up.

For those having trouble finding email addresses, perhaps you can try looking for fax numbers as well as snail-mail addresses. To begin with, the post-internet generation still share a very low percentage in a century-old industry.

But speaking from experience as a person who have traveled around the world and have worked in the travel industry, if it's not easy to book, it may not be easy to communicate once you actually arrive to their location. Quite often, those places are for people who can enjoy happenings and accidents, which in my opinion are often true local culture.

Meanwhile, a true ryokan/minshuku/pension experience comes with two meals at a place so remote there are no restaurants around opened at night. Some ryokans are more like restaurants where you can stay overnight. And I can assume that the ryokan in issue wanted to provide a special room only for a special dining experience. On the other hand, the ryokan probably decided to provide a more easy-to-maintain room for those who wish to have no dinner. Similar things can be said for other services such as spa experience.

And I don't know about those specific ryokans and hotels, but quite often, an organization would provide something (such as a special room) only if they can expect financial profit from other things (such as meals and spa). That's how they balance the cost, and it happens outside Japan as well.

Lastly, for those who can write kana, all you have to do is to fill in the kana version of your name in the furigana section.

All in all, I just wanted to thank the OP and to provide a background story. Some may call it "not foreigner-friendly", but whether it's Japan or anywhere else, foreigner-friendly places are often less authentic, and you can't help it.

As man other have mentioned, it's not unusual for ryokan to create bundled packages for specific rooms, meal plans, and stay lengths. With this being the first summer since the pandemic for international travel to be fully open in Japan, and with a lot of Japanese residents also taking their first major trips since the pandemic started, there's a lot of pent-up demand for hotel/ryokan rooms, so hotel operators are likely taking advantage of that by doing more high-priced bundles than they did a few years ago.

As for being asked to enter your name in furigana, I can think of two possibilities.

1. If the form was in Japanese and you were entering your name/home address in katakana, you would simply repeat the same katakana again. Japanese forms ask for furigana because some kanji can be read multiple ways, and the only way to know the correct pronunciation for sure is to provide the furigana, i.e. the phonetic reading in hiragana.

For example, someone with the family name 山崎 might be "Yamazaki," or they might be "Yamasaki" - it depends on the family. So if "Yamazaki" was filling out a form, they'd write the kanji in the sot for name, and the correct reading of their name, like this.
名前：山崎
ふりがな：やまざき

Of course, if you have a non-Japanese name that's written in katakana, then the phonetics are already there, since katakana can only be read one way. But the furigana spot on the form still needs to be filled, so you just write your name twice. For example, "Smith" would do it like this.
名前：スミス
ふりがな：スミス

2. If the form was in English but still asked for furigana, it's probably an oversight on the document design in which they just translated everything from the Japanese form directly and didn't remove the spot for furigana. If you're filling out the document in English, you should be OK just writing your name twice, like this.
Name: Smith
Furigana: Smith

Thanks for the responses. Just to add some context, I've been to Japan over 15 times now (once to twice a year until a gap during COVID) where I have self booked for at least the last 10 trips. We usually stay at about 5 different places in a 2 week trip, usually 2 nights in a ryokan, 2 nights hotel rotation unless we were out in the country in which case we always stay in a ryokan and have the dinner (after being caught out a few times and making do with instant ramen). So I guess I have booked ryokans upwards of 20 times, whether direct or through Japan Guest Houses, Booking.com, or Japanican, I'm not being critical of the system I came across this time, it was just new to me.

Anyway, the situations this time arose in Kyoto when we were trying to book for peak time in November at Arashiyama, and also Gion. One place with the set room per meal or vice versa (Kyokoyado Yasaka Yutone, absolutely fantastic) we had only stayed at earlier this year when we were there in February/March. Another place is the Hikone Castle Spa Resort (also fabulous, stayed there a few years ago) and it was the one where I couldnt proceed with the booking due to the Furagana (sp?) issue and no email address, ultimately I could send a fax from work but we were in a bit of a panic with accommodation challenges and I ended up booking at Kamenoi Hotel on lake Biwa instead.

I'll just add again, thanks for the responses, it is super fascinating for us, and your information is excellent. I think as Uco mentioned that it all might have been serendipitous, as we are really happy with where we have ended up. Ultimately having less kaiseki is actually a bit of a relief for us, it is fine the first night but the next you start getting stressed that you wont be hungry enough, by the third you are sweating even thinking about all that food. I would be happy with the ryokan breakfasts at dinner, they are perfect for my appetite.

as an addendum, we have ended up with 3 nights at Namba (not a massive fan but using it as a base for day trips to Himeji, Mt koya, and then off to Yoshino), Yoshino, Nara (Nara Hotel 3 nights, boom, we love that place), Arahiyama 2 nights, Gion, 3 nights, then Hikone 2 nights. Been everywhere except Mt Koya and Yoshino before, just wanting to get back to what we have been missing the last 3 years.

Thanks again!

I agree that booking ryokan (onsen and meals) is the most challenging and exciting part of trip prep.
Since 2008 have been in J for 8 times, always 2-3 nights in some nice onsen town with proper dinner in ryokan. 10-15 years ago we used Japanican for booking, but after it changed it is not so good any more. Luckily many ryokans are in booking.com now, but confusingly available plans there are often different from what we see on hotel webpage (we use them if are ENG).

Still I am pretty sure that lots of good ryokans are available only in Japanese, so we not-speakers have quite limited choice...

booking.com is now unreliable.
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/5412aa870ce35b5295aa59a2afff8af1117c...
generally speaking, delay payment is the first stage of bankrupt.

ken - this article is about Yahoo as much I understand?