Garden room
Screens slide open onto the inner garden, its raked gravel and one stone lantern.
A ryokan-style inn in the Nevada desert
Slow mornings,
quiet evenings.
Twenty-four tatami rooms around a natural hot spring, a cedar bath fed by that spring, a kaiseki table at night, and a small casino kept indoors on the lower floor.
Gaming room: 21 and over, photo ID at the door
Write to the innThe house and the spring
Megumi House sits back from the road in Tessaro Springs, behind a cedar gate and a short gravel path. Inside, the floors are tatami, the walls are pale clay, and washi screens soften the afternoon sun, which out here is hard and white until about five.
Warm water rises from the ground under the courtyard. The inn was laid out around it. We kept it to twenty-four rooms so the staff remember how you take your tea, and so the corridors stay quiet enough to hear the wind move through the gravel garden.
House customs
- Tea is poured for every guest on arrival.
- Shoes stay at the door; slippers wait inside.
- The house goes quiet after nine.
- Mornings start with a short walk around the gravel garden, before the heat.
Four kinds of room
Futons are laid out at dusk and folded away after breakfast, whichever room you choose.
Tatami room
Eight mats, a low table and a tokonoma alcove holding a single branch, changed with the season.
Corner suite
Two rooms joined by an engawa veranda, with windows on two sides of the courtyard.
Upper room
Under the eaves, facing east over the roofs to bare hills that turn pink just before sunrise.
The spring bath
The bath house is a low timber room at the end of the garden path, built over the spot where the spring comes up. Its water runs straight into two deep hinoki tubs. Nothing is added. Bathing times alternate through the day, so you will rarely share the room, and the one window looks onto bamboo planted against the wall to break the desert wind.
Supper
Kaiseki is served in the dining room each evening, one course at a time.
- Sakizuke
- Hassun
- Mukōzuke
- Yakimono
- Gohan
21+
Lower floor, after supper
The casino at Megumi House
Megumi House has a small casino of its own, kept inside the inn on the lower floor. You reach it from the lobby along the covered garden corridor, past the stone basin, so there is no need to step out into the desert night.
The room is modest. A few tables sit under low paper lamps, the drinks list is short (sake, bourbon and roasted tea), and chairs are set well apart. Most guests come down for an hour after supper and are in bed by midnight.
The casino opens in the evening only, from 6 p.m. until 1 a.m. Simple smart dress is enough: a collared shirt or a plain dress. Slippers stay at the step.
Guests must be 21 or older, the legal gaming age in Nevada. Staff check a valid photo ID at the casino door every evening, even for guests they already know by name.
The casino house rules are short and hang in a frame beside the entrance. Limits are set on the gaming floor by staff at the start of each evening, and they keep to them.
If you would rather not go back in, ask at the front desk and we will arrange self-exclusion from the casino in person. It is handled privately, needs no reason, and holds for the rest of your stay and any later visit.
Outside the inn, help is free and open to anyone. Gamblers Anonymous holds meetings in many countries and online, and BetBlocker, a small charity, makes an app that keeps gambling sites off your devices.
Writing to the inn
Megumi HouseTessaro Springs, Nevada
[email protected]
Rooms are booked by email, not on this site. Tell us the dates you have in mind and how many guests are coming. If someone needs a room on the ground floor, say so too.
Please leave payment details out of your message. Nothing is paid by email; the bill is settled at the inn when you check in.
What happens to your email afterward is explained in our privacy notice.
A printed card with casino hours and the house rules sits on the front desk counter.