Foodways and Craftways by Mokkei & Hanamurasaki

Welcome to a retreat designed for deep cultural immersion, meaningful exchange, and restorative calm. Itineraries ranging from 2 nights to 5 can be created for guests to experience Yamanaka Onsen through its most intimate expressions—its food, its crafts, and its landscape.

Your days begin at Mokkei, a studio in a century-old farmhouse with an open-air garden kitchen where the seasons reveal themselves in shifting light and mountain air. Around a long, wooden table, you’ll cook alongside professional chefs and home cooks, preparing meals with ingredients grown, foraged, and caught nearby. Workshops with artisans skilled in Yamanaka’s renowned lacquerware open doors to the region’s craft traditions, while explorations through forests and along river paths offer moments of quiet connection with the environment.

This is not an itinerary built around checklists or sightseeing. It is an invitation to rediscover the textures of daily life—heat rising from a hot spring, hands shaping food, conversations unfolding over shared work. Guided by Kohei Yamada, sixth-generation owner of Hanamurasaki, a luxurious hot-spring inn overlooking Kakusenkei gorge, and Hannah Kirshner, writer, illustrator and founder of Mokkei, you’ll step into a community where craft, nature, and hospitality remain intertwined.

Accommodations are at Hanamurasaki, where refined architecture, seasonal cuisine, and the option of private open-air baths create a serene, personalized haven. Rooted in the richness of regional Japan, this retreat offers a new kind of luxury—one defined not by extravagance, but by a sense of belonging.