Kitchen

The kitchen at Kinugawa Kan runs along the back of the hotel's ground floor, fitted out for the volume of meal service the property needed at full occupancy. A long stainless-steel preparation bench runs down the centre of the room, with cooking stations along one wall and a row of rice cookers, water boilers, and a large industrial gas stove against the other. Most of the smaller equipment has been removed: knives, cookware, and portable appliances are gone. The fixed plant remains: the gas stove, the bain marie, the dishwasher, the cool room at the back. Tiles on the wall are pale green; the floor is sloped concrete leading to a central drain. The lighting overhead is fluorescent strip, much of it failed.

The kitchen at Kinugawa Kan served the hotel's dining hall through the operational decades of the property. Japanese ryokan cuisine ran to multi-course kaiseki meals at dinner and lighter washoku at breakfast, with the food prepared in volume across multiple stations. The kitchen ran on the hotel's own gas supply and water service. After the June 1999 bankruptcy, the kitchen was wound down with the rest of the property. Portable equipment was removed; the fixed plant stayed in place. The room has been sealed since.