Hoshino Resorts drops washoku for Italian and Shinshu wine at Kai Matsumoto

Hoshino Resorts reopened its Kai Matsumoto ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) in Nagano Prefecture on 4 August after a full renovation that replaces the property's washoku (Japanese-cuisine) dinner with an Italian menu built around local Shinshu wine — the first Italian dining concept across the operator's 23-property Kai brand, according to the company.

The new dinner course is built around wines from the Kikyogahara Wine Valley, a Shinshu winemaking area the company points to for light, crisp styles that pair with food. All 29 guest rooms, 19 of which have private open-air baths, have been rebuilt as "GAKU rooms" (from the Japanese for music or enjoyment), each fitted with a record player and speakers, and headboard art made using Matsumoto keiseizuri, a local lacquerware technique. A wine bar has been added as a third social space alongside the property's baths and dining room.

Rooms start from ¥41,000 per person, based on two sharing, tax and service included, with dinner and breakfast. The property's bathing facilities span eight spring types across 13 variations, plus a sauna, the company said. Bookings opened on 22 April, ahead of the 4 August reopening.

Kai's format has always rested on washoku as the default, so dropping it entirely at one property is a bigger swing than a seasonal menu refresh — it bets that a wine-and-music theme, rather than the tea-ceremony formality more common across the brand, can pull a different kind of domestic traveller into a hot-spring town Nagano already has many of. With three more Kai openings planned this year, Matsumoto's Italian pivot reads as a live test of how far the brand can stretch its format before it stops being recognisably Kai — worth watching whether the concept spreads or stays the outlier.