I wanted cheap & clean hotels near the train stations as we had to transport our heavy luggage ourselves. Every other day in Oct, armed with a map of the subway stations, I surf the internet for hotels. My criteria for choosing a hotel: location (must be within 10mins from train stn), outlook of the room must look new & clean (from internet photos), toilet (must have auto wash system), price & guest reviews. Sometimes after making reservations, I would find a better hotel and cancel the 1st reservation ;p
The hotels we stayed at:
22/11 ~ 24/11: Hotel Unizo, Yodoyabashi (Osaka)
25/11: Cube Hotel Ueno Express (Tokyo)
26/11: Smile Hotel (Hakodate)
27/11 ~ 29/11: Hotel Fino (Sapporo)
30/11: Comfort Hotel (Hakodate)
1/11, 3-5/12: Comfort Hotel, Higashi-Nihonbashi (Tokyo)
In total we stayed at 7 different hotels for 13 nights and spent an average of S$60/pax/night at each hotel. 1 night stay at ryokan excluded.
All the hotels were nice & clean though a little cramped. They all had a bath-tub except for Cube hotel. A luxury to us as we would soak in the hot water at the end of each day. As I’m a member at a Japanese hotel website, I could get good business hotels at 20 – 30% off the hotel rack rate. Plus I could offset the rate with accumulated points from previous hotel stays. So we saved quite a bit on that.
Our fav hotels were Hotel Unizo (S$60/pax/night) at Osaka & Hotel Fino (S$50/pax/night) at Sapporo. Very new & clean, relatively spacious room & bathroom, long bath-tub, big tv screen, free use of PC/internet at lobby, good service & high-class atmosphere ;p
The worse was Smile Hotel. Cramped and very budget looking. Well, for only S$30/pax/night, what could we ask for? It was very near the train station and had a nice view from the room though. Another jialat hotel was Cube Hotel. Very cramped with hardly any walking space, not to mention luggage space! No bath tub L Only saving grace was its proximity to Ueno station coz we had to catch an early train to Hokkaido. Plus it’s clean & tidy & has free PC/internet to use & free coffee/orange juice.
Comfort Hotel Chain was quite good too. (Hakodate & Tokyo ~ average S$70/pax/nite). They had daily free buffet breakfast (the price is probably included in the room rate already) for the guests. Quite a good variety of tasty food which we enjoyed ~ 6-8 types of bread, 8 types of rice balls, 2 soups, 2 cereals, 3 types of fruits, sausage, scrambled eggs, salad, yogurt, freshly brewed coffee, orange juice and tea. Locations were near stations. Service was good and there was free use of PC/internet access and free flow of coffee the whole day. The comfort hotel at Tokyo was along the local train line to Narita Airport so we didn’t have to change trains and it’s cheaper too. The only problem is the lack of escalator from the ticket gate to station exit. My poor bf had to carry two 15kg luggage up 3 flights of stairs!
We stayed at a ryokan on 2/12 at Lake Kawaguchi (Fuji 5 Lakes). This cost me a bomb at S$290/pax/nite. And as it’s a birthday treat for my bf, it really bombed my pocket lor! Haiz, if only the exchange rate was better…. But it’s worth every cent of it! Our plan included dinner & breakfast, use of common hotspring, 50mins use of the private hotspring (just the 2 of us!) and a birthday cake. Dinner was served in our 12.5-tatami room and someone came at night to make our bed (mattress). Very “Japan Hour”! Breakfast was heavy with rice and many other dishes. Best of all, we had a superb view of Mt Fuji from our hotel’s rooftop & hotsprings. Needless to say, bf was thrilled with the ryokan experience.
I’m glad I didn’t go for hostels this time and booked business hotels instead. Although it’s a little more costly (extra S$20+/pax/night compared to hostels), it’s worth it for the personal room & bathroom/toilet, cleaner room & facilities and better service.
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