Japan has more than a hundred castles. It lets you walk through most of them between nine and five, but only two hand you a key overnight. At Ozu on Shikoku, you arrive at 5 pm after the public leaves. You are announced as lord of the domain in a reenactment of the 1617 procession with conch-shell horn and squad. You sleep on the ground floor of a four-storey keep rebuilt from 350-year-old Kiso cedar. At Hirado in Nagasaki, you take over a turret of a Top 100 castle. It has 66 tatami mats to yourselves and a bathroom glassed on three sides over the strait. Neither option is a hotel. It also does not appear on a booking engine in March for a night in May.
We put together ten places to sleep in Japan that aren’t hotels, ordered by price from $35 to the castle. Between them lies a mountain ryokan in Aomori with no electricity in the rooms. A hundred kerosene lamps glow at dusk, and that is the building’s only light. A working Buddhist temple on Mount Koya with a 9pm curfew and a lantern-lit cemetery outside. The world’s oldest hotel, run by the same family for 52 generations since 705 AD. A 70-year-old geisha practice house in Tokyo with a private chef and, behind a padded leather door, the world’s smallest disco. A few of these take reservations by phone in Japanese only, and the best rooms go first. Read the full list, then tell us your dates — we book these direct, with the transport and experiences attached, and we’ll tell you honestly which ones are worth the rate.