Everything at the Shiroyama Hotel is BIG. And impeccably luxurious in the classic European tradition (the doormen wear top hats). Now six decades old, the Shiroyama has been kept modern, polished, and beautifully appointed, inside and out. This hotel has plenty of everything — varieties of rooms, restaurants and bars, spas , onsens, and health facilities, stores, bakeries, boutiques, and, it seems, countless ballrooms and meeting rooms. All are of the highest order, as is the service.
The huge Shiroyama — 385 rooms — is nestled in a wonderful hilltop park overlooking Kagoshima, with scores of challenging walking paths. But for many guests like us, the main attraction is the view across Kinko Bay to the very active volcano Sakurajima. It’s staggeringly beautiful — which raises an important point: be sure your room is in the front of the hotel! We were almost put in a room on the hotel’s inland-facing backside (despite booking well in advance and being high ranking One Harmony members), which would have been a catastrophe. To the front, the vistas overlooking a wonderful fountain are quite breathtaking, day and night. Our medium-tier room was spacious, modern, and equipped with a large picture window and an attractively-renovated bathroom.
speaking of breathtaking, also pretty breathtaking is the breakfast buffet, laid out in a giant glass-walled room with a grand volcano vista and featuring miles and miles of buffet counters displaying myriad Japanese and western menu items being sampled by hundreds of diners (interesting note: on our two days there we were the only gaijin in the room). We cannot speak to the quality of the other restaurants except for the rather bland Cantonese restaurant, which gets a B-plus at best, although the decor was nice.
The Shiroyama provides a complimentary luxury shuttle bus to various locations down the mountain in Kagoshima, including a lift to the the Shinkansen station and to the ferry across to the volcano (a worthwhile junket, we thought, when you include the bus tour on the volcano side). All other services and amenities are top-notch, and if you like living big in southern Japan, the Shiroyama is a first-class way to go.