Here's a pretty how-to-do. My dictionary gives "ryotan" as Japanese inn. It does not have
"ryoten" There are many more sites that us the "a", but a couple that used them
interfchangeably. A couple sites said "ryoten" meant "passport". Whoever picked this word
for spelling bee was an anal orifice.

Ryokan is an inn, ryoken is a passport per my dictionary. No ryoten or ryotan given. The ryo kanji are the same for both ryoken and ryokan; it means travel.

T for K typo. Sorry about that. Again a hell of a word for highschool kid spelling bee.

Ryokan I could see as a spelling bee word if they had studied Japanese literature at all. Ryoken I dunno. I doubt the word-giver pronounced it right; the ry(V) combo in Japanese is well outside the English phoneme norm.

Where V is any of the vowels a, o or u.