Whenever Japan comes up in conversation, people love dispensing advice. You’re likely to be fed an endless list of ryokans (traditional Japanese inns) and restaurants you have to try, and not one name will overlap with another—ahead of my own trip there last fall, I spent months waffling through seemingly identical options.
Then Reika Alexander, the half-Japanese, half-Taiwanese founder of the recently shuttered New York restaurant En Japanese Brasserie, told me about Asaba Ryokan. It looked different.
