Twelve guests, one bell, three hundred stone steps.
One night on the ridge
Three hundred stone steps, a lantern at every twentieth one, and a guide who walks last. Bring nothing you cannot carry in one hand.
Where you sleep
Timber room above the bell terrace, paper screens, a cedar bath that looks at the pass.
$420 a nightSleeps 2
Two rooms around a gravel courtyard, a low table for supper and a stove that stays lit until morning.
$360 a nightSleeps 4
The room under the bell. A skylight, a futon on a raised floor and the quietest hour of the night.
$580 a nightSleeps 2
What the house does
Four small habits, kept for centuries. None of them is a performance. They are how a mountain house learns to be quiet.
A guided, unhurried loop of the upper terraces with paper lanterns made on site that afternoon.
Runs nightly at dusk, about 70 minutes, suitable for most mobility levels with the shorter route.
Hand-roasted tea at the low table, poured in the order the house has always poured it.
Served from 23:30 to 00:30. Decaffeinated roasted barley tea is always available.
One slow strike at nine, midnight and first light. You hear it in your bones before your ears.
Guests may ring the midnight bell once. We ask for one strike, no more.
Twenty minutes of nothing, facing the east, with a blanket and a flask of something warm.
Cushions and blankets are on the steps from 05:00. The sit ends when the first light touches the roof.
I fell asleep to the bell and woke to a ridge the colour of a peach. I have not been that quiet since I was nine.
One short note when the first frost arrives and when the lanterns return. No more than six a year.