Best Pet Friendly Hotels in Yamagata

Friends booked us in at Sangoro so we could ski in / out... and it truly is ski in/out... not like places at the bottom of the hill where u can only ski in/out if there’s a decent amount of snow. Sangoro is at mid-mountain, so if the resort is open for the winter season, you can ski in / out of this hotel. The disadvantage of being at mid-mountain is that there is only Sangoro there and you can’t leave / get back there from The main village after 5pm. So all your evenings are spent at the hotel. It wasn’t a problem for us, but I think you’d get cabin fever if u stayed there too long. They have a reasonable dinner menu that is mostly Japanese but has a few western and vegetarian options (spaghetti with soy meat and margarita pizza). They have a soft drink machine and soup machine which are free for people staying there (all u can drink). There’s also a pool table, table tennis table, a few games and a massage chair u can use (the massage chair is quite good after a day on the slopes). The bathrooms are Japanese (shared) but you can only use them between 7-9am and 5-10pm... only showers can be used in the morning but they fill up the big hot baths in the evenings. The women’s bathroom is down on the lowest level, so you have to go down 2 or 3 flights of stairs to get there. Men’s bathroom is on the main floor, with the hotel rooms 1 and 2 floors above. There are no elevators, so you need to be ok with climbing the fairly steep stairs and carrying luggage up/down. They have a drying room on the lowest level for ski gear, but someone kept opening the window in the room so it was always very cold in there (no point putting your stuff in there to dry). One thing everyone in our group complained about was the beds and/or pillows... not comfortable at all! I had poor sleep as I had to keep rotating all night or my arm or leg would go numb. The people working at the hotel are really nice. Some of them speak better English than others... we didn’t have any language issues but we did have a couple of people in our group who speak good Japanese, which was helpful for anything complicated. To get to the hotel you have to catch the Chuo Ropeway up to mid-mountain and get the hotel to pick you up in their special car (on tracks to drive on the snow). If you need lift tickets it’s a little cheaper to purchase them from the hotel but you. I enjoyed my time at Sangoro (except the beds), but it’s not somewhere I’d stay for a really long time due to its remoteness (there are really good and not so good things about being isolated on the mountain).

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Set in Zao Onsen in the Yamagata region, with Zao Onsen Ski Resort nearby, SANGORO ONSEN LODGE offers accommodation with free WiFi and free private parking, as well as access to a hot tub. The accommodation provides a shared kitchen and a shared lounge for guests. The 4-bedroom holiday home is fitted with a living room with a flat-screen TV with streaming services, a fully equipped kitchen with an oven and a microwave, and 3 bathrooms with a hair dryer. Towels and bed linen are featured in the holiday home. During the colder months, guests can enjoy winter sports in the surrounding area. The nearest airport is Yamagata Airport, 35 km from the holiday home.