Rest Inn Tokinosumika (Ashigara SA)

The only hotel on the inbound Tomei, where you never leave the expressway

Rest Inn Tokinosumika sits inside Ashigara Service Area on the inbound side of the Tomei Expressway, heading toward Tokyo. It is the only place to stay on the inbound side, and its greatest strength is that you can pull in and spend the night without ever leaving the expressway. Check-in is generous, from 4 p.m. right through to 3 a.m., and checkout is at 10 a.m. On the way home from Gotemba, Hakone or the Fuji Five Lakes, instead of driving into the small hours with a fretful child stuck in traffic, you can stop here for the night and finish the drive refreshed the next morning - and it is exactly this kind of stopover night on a long family drive that shows what the hotel is for. As a place to split a trip home or a holiday into two stages, it draws down-to-earth reviews on Rakuten Travel, where guests say the bath is superb and that they have no complaints if all they need is a place to sleep (3.88 out of 5, 641 reviews). Note that the shuttle service that once ran from the outbound side ended in 2022, so you should plan to arrive from the inbound side.

Business-hotel rooms, with three Japanese-style tatami rooms for families

There are 38 rooms in all, mostly business-hotel style: 24 singles (13 sq m) and 10 twins (19 sq m). For a family, the options are the Japanese-style tatami room (25 sq m, only 3 of them), which has two connecting spaces of 6 and 4 tatami mats and sleeps up to 5, or the barrier-free room (just 1), which takes up to 3 guests with an extra bed. In the tatami room you can lay out futons side by side, which is reassuring if you have a child at the co-sleeping stage. With so few of these rooms, booking early is essential for a family stay. Every room has an en-suite bathroom and a washlet toilet, and a humidifier and iron are available to borrow, but this is above all a place to sleep. There are no children's facilities such as a play space, and, as the facilities rating of 3.67 suggests, there is nothing lavish about it. How happy you are here depends on whether you can take it on those terms.

Kintoki-yu, a communal bath of highly carbonated water, free for staying guests

The biggest reward here is Kintoki-yu, the bathing facility inside the SA. It has a communal bath of highly carbonated water that warms you from the core, plus a dry sauna, and staying guests can use it free of charge (day visitors pay from 780 yen for adults and from 390 yen for ages 5 through elementary school). It is open from noon until 10 the next morning, so even if you arrive late at night you can soak before bed - a real relief for a parent worn out from driving. Washing children one after another in an en-suite bathroom is far more work than getting everyone into a big bath at once. There is also a coin laundry in the men's and women's changing rooms, so you can reset your clothes partway through the trip.

A restaurant open from 6 a.m., and no trouble finding food inside the SA

Restaurant Tokinosumika, inside the building and the SA, is open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., with local dishes such as the celebrated Shizuoka oden as well as takeout. The shop is open 24 hours, and there is also Shizuoka Seisen Marche, which carries raw shirasu (whitebait) from Shizuoka and Fuji Yusui pork. Arrive at midnight or leave at dawn and you will still find something to eat - a strength that comes with being inside a service area. One thing to be aware of: to help prevent drink-driving, no shop in the SA sells alcohol. Parents will have to give up the customary drink on the road.

How to stay here with children

The way to use it is simple: as a base for a night before or after an outing, letting the next morning absorb the traffic you would otherwise sit in. Pull into Ashigara SA by late afternoon, get Kintoki-yu and dinner out of the way, put the children to bed early in the tatami room, and set off the next morning before the traffic builds - that is the tried-and-true pattern. This is not a place to come for sightseeing or a resort mood, but it is a far safer and more comfortable choice than pressing on down a midnight expressway with a child who has had all they can take of being in a car seat.