Minshuku Iwakawa

Comfortable, quiet guesthouse with a roof top terrace. The guesthouse has a mix of tatami and wood floored rooms. The room was equipped with a TV, AC and wifi. The bed is a Japanese futon and very comfortable. There's a shower room, toilet, microwave, fridge and hot water pot. The staff were friendly and helpful, they recommended some good local restaurants in the area and provided an English map. Luggage can be left before check in and after check out.

The rooms are on the third floor and the stairs are difficult to navigate if you have large luggage.

There is spacious kitchen and utensils. Guests can cook. In our cases, we bought some food (for breakfast and lunch pack for the next day hiking) in fridge and made breakfast warm. It was very convenient to have kitchen. If we can place an order in advance, staff will prepare lunch box (for hiking) and will deliver at 4am. So for hikers, it is quite convenient as out there, there is no convenient stores which run 24 hours like in cities. Supermarket will close around 7pm ~ 9pm depending on the store. Apart from that, room is clean. Environment is quiet and it is very easy to access bus stop and port.

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My room was above the fishing shop. The place is pretty old and tired, but absolutely squeaky clean. The Airconditioner in my room was great (and necessary given the heat wave when I was there). The location was perfect: right in front of the bus stop and walking distance from many restaurants.

The shared facilities are in need of an upgrade, but I'd stay there again.

The new building where I stayed at was 10-15 min walk from Miyanoura port and extremely close to the bus stop to Shiratani Unsuikyo, which is very convenient. The place was clean and had all the facilities you would need, washing machines, dryers, shoe dryers - everything was easy to use and worked well. The owner was very friendly and explained to me where everything was and allowed luggage storage at the main building even before checking in.

The AC in my room gave off a really strong, almost nauseating mildew smell when turned on. Normally your nose would adjust to a faint smell and stop smelling it after a while, but in this case, it was so bad that it stayed very dominant for every second of my stay. Apart from the sheer discomfort, it became a real health concern, and made an otherwise almost perfect stay not so pleasant. It's really a shame, but I would hesitate to book again when I visit Yakushima in the future.