Ohana Matsumae is an energetic teenager residing in Tokyo with her carefree single mother. One day, her mother decides to flee from debt collectors with her new boyfriend, which requires sending her daughter to live out west where Ohana’s grandmother enlists her as an employee of her ryokan. Driven to adapt to the tranquil lifestyle of the countryside, Ohana experiences and deals with the challenges of working as a maid, as well as meeting and making friends with difficult and enthralling people at her new school and the inn.
Hanasaku Iroha is P.A. Works’ first original anime and is often considered to be the earliest of P.A. Works’ unofficial ‘oshigoto series’ [お仕事シリーズ], predating similar works like Shirobako and Sakura Quest. Later entries to this niche of low-stakes workplace dramas have generally followed casts of slightly older characters.
The ryokan in the anime is heavily set in Yuwaku Onsen in Ishikawa Prefecture, in the mountains just southwest of the prefecture’s capital, Kanazawa. Several key locations from the anime can be found here, like the model for the rival inn, the Inari Shrine, and the lake. Visitors should be sure to take a moment to stop into the Yuwaku Hot Spring Sight Seeing Information Center, which is completely decked out with standees, pilgrimage notebooks, and other goods related to Hanasaku Iroha.
Bonbori Matsuri
One of the most notable aspects of Hanasaku Iroha‘s legacy is that it manifested a fictional festival into existence. The Yuwaku Onsen Bonbori Matsuri is now a real festival that has been held annually for over 10 years which is directly inspired by the fictional festival depicted in the anime. The Yuwaku Onsen Tourism Association promotes this event as a destination for fans of the anime.
Nishigishi “Yunosagi” Station
In the opening episode of the anime, Ohana disembarks from the train to a station platform labeled ‘Yunosagi’. There is no such station in real life, but given the design of the setting, it seemed to be based on Nishigi Station on the Noto Peninsula. Shortly after the anime aired, Noto Railway comissioned a wrapped train themed after Hanasaku Iroha, whose stops include Nishigishi Station. Additionally, fictional signboards for ‘Yunosagi Station’ were installed at Nishigishi Station.
The Yunosagi signs seemed to have been significantly faded by the time of Mike Hattsu‘s visit in 2019, but more recent expeditions show them prominently, so they may have been repainted.
