Minshuku Inn Shirahama Ekinoyado

the minshuku inn is a homey place. it is like visiting your aunt and staying in her place for a vacation. the proprietress was very funny and friendly. her breakfast (which was an addition to our room rate) was typical japanese with a touch of homeyness, like what a japanese mom will prepare for her children. the room we had was a shared room and it was adequate for japaness standards. we got the room with an external bath (which was an open air bathtub) which opens up to the nearby jr train station. it was quirky and cute. you might think that it nearness to the jr train station (it's literall a spitting distance) would make the place quite noisy but surprisingly it was not. wifi is good, free bread and snacks and tea is available. brewed coffee is fresh for 100 yen. its a working inn and the husband and wife team who owns/manages/cleans the place are very welcoming and friendly. because the place is near the jr station and bus terminal, you have easy access to going to key places in shiraham such as adventure land (which was 15 mins by local bus) and shirahama proper (at least 30 mins) and tore-tore shin (nice open market food court cum grocery supermarket). so it will be no difficulty to go from one place or another in shirahama and the other key natural areas to be visited. unfortunately, we devoted most of our visit to adventure land because of the baby panda and stayed there the whole day and had no opportunity to visit other places in shirahama during the day time. you definitely need more than 3days to visit.

the inn is a bit off the main commercial/town center and therefore not many shopping or commercial amenities are available specially at night. shirahama is like a typical small japanese town, where activity and shops closes by 7pm even at the city center. if you are not staying in the city centre like where minshuku inn was you have to dinner early in the city to be able to go back to minshuku (or else miss the last bus or take your chance to get a taxi). in our case, it was fortunate that there is a tourist shop cum eating place near the jr station/minshuku inn that is open until 730pm, last order is 7pm, that serves very good local ramen, rice curry, soba/noodles, and other local delicacies. its a family-owned shop and the people there are very warm and helpful too.