- A video review of the Hyatt Centric Tokyo Ginza Hotel.
I'm Chris, this is Topher.
This is Yellow Productions,
we do travel guides that are fun,
informative and entertaining.
And in this video we're gonna be telling you
everything you need to know if you're considering
staying at this hotel,
including showing you the common areas of the hotel,
the neighborhood around the hotel
and the inside of one of the rooms,
this room a two twin bedroom,
but first let's talk about the neighborhood of the hotel.
The Hyatt Centric Ginza is located here in Ginza.
This is Tokyo's biggest luxury shopping district.
It's about three blocks here from
the main district of Ginza,
but in Ginza, you will find all the
high end luxury shopping stores,
all the boutiques
and it's gonna be expensive in this district though.
And so you're gonna find high end restaurants,
you're not gonna find a lot of cheap restaurants,
but Ginza Station is right here.
This is the main station in the area,
this is the closest station to the hotel.
The closest exit is B3, though we really liked exit B6
because there was a 7-Eleven and a drugstore
right at that exit of Ginza Station.
And if you're coming here from the airport with luggage,
know that in that station, there's a lot of steps.
They are renovating it for the Olympics,
coming up with a new station concourse opening in June,
so I'm not sure what it's gonna look like then,
hopefully less steps.
The Hyatt Centric Ginza has 164 guest rooms
located in a 13 storey building
while actually the guest rooms
are on floors five and above.
The first floor that you walk into,
just some shops along the bottom
and an elevator lobby.
You take the elevator up the third floor
if you were to get out there,
that'd be the hotel's restaurant,
the fourth floor, which is the hotel's lobby.
Now coming out that elevator right below
is the hotel's restaurant, we'll see that in a moment.
Straight to the back is kind of a lounge area,
check-in is over there on the left
looking a little closer at the lounge area.
It's got some pretty nice sofas,
it's a pretty comfortable place to lounge.
They've also got a money exchange machine
down on the third floor of the hotel's restaurant,
had a very lively bar and a buffet restaurant.
The buffet is pretty expensive,
we did not eat at this restaurant.
Just behind the check-in the area is the hotel's gym.
It's a fairly small gym but pretty well lit.
It's got three treadmills,
it's got a couple of windows
that just look out on some random buildings on the side.
Couple ellipticals, stair-climber, one bike
and one of these contractions over here.
There is some cold water,
nicely in this refrigerator here in the corner.
Now that we've seen everything around the hotel,
let's check out the inside of one of the rooms.
This is room 1102, a standard twin room on the 11th floor.
Come on in, let me show you around.
We're gonna get back to this in a moment.
It's an interesting layout for the room,
I do wanna point out that it's pretty big,
it's like 35 square meters,
which is really big for Tokyo standards.
So first we'll take a look over here,
take a look at this wall.
We'll see there's two twin beds in the room,
Topher's is already relaxing.
There's this nice yellow wall,
so I like this already.
Is this yellow, is it orange? I don't know
There's some lights back here.
The whole room has kind of a funky vibe,
you'll notice the reading light
on this side of the bed looks like this
and the reading light on this side of the bed
kind of has a whole different kind of lamp effect to it.
The window shades,
they're like these high tech window shades.
So we can just like push this button right here
and the window shades go up
and we can look out and see the rooftops of Ginza.
That's basically what you see out here,
it's not really a fantastic view,
but that's what's there,
we'll put that back down again
because it kind of looks better that way.
Interesting little chair here, there's no desk in the room.
This is probably the equivalent of the desk in the room,
kind of like a dining room table, flat-panel television.
Interesting red art on the walls,
I'm guessing that's like old-timey Ginza, old-timey Japan.
Okay now here, this thing that I ran into
as we walked in this way,
this is the central counter in the room.
I've never been in a room
that has a central counter like this
and it's got some buttons to turn on different lights
and turn off different lights in here.
In this drawer, this is maybe like the standard desk drawer
that has your pen and this
and the information about the hotel
doesn't come in a folder,
it comes in this kind of like wacky little thing, all right.
The power plugs this and that are up on this.
Now the other interesting thing
that's on this countertop is,
it kind of looks like a kitchen countertop, right?
And kitchen countertops have a sink.
Well it has a sink, it is right underneath here
along with the mirror.
Now you might say, where are the towels?
The towels are right over,
they're right there, right down here, here are the towels.
There's no towel rack,
I haven't figured out where to hang the towels yet.
There is a Kleenex box that's yellow, that's interesting,
and there's some mirrors and stuff like that here.
This drawer has the amenities for Hyatt Centric,
including nail files, brushes and a yellow toothbrush,
they really like yellow in this room.
So they're probably gonna get some extra points for that.
What's in this drawer?
There's two more little towels kind of hidden away
in this drawer.
Let's go look at the kind of the closet area
and then we'll come and take a look at the bathroom.
So the closet, we walked past this as we came in,
is an open closet.
We've been traveling in Japan for a week so far
on this trip and so we've amassed a bunch of stuff.
But they've got some robes in here,
they've got Japanese style pajamas, yukatas.
I think when I do my room review later,
you'll see me in these and see what they look like,
so that's kind of neat.
There's a safe and then there's some slippers down here.
Oh, interesting, there's also a lint roller
in case you've got some lint
that you need to roll off.
Before we go to the bathroom,
we didn't make it to the other side of this counter,
there's an espresso, some complimentary water,
right below that there's a little ice bucket,
you can make hot water in there.
In here's the tea set cups, tea Twinings Tea,
and then the refrigerator,
it's one of these interesting refrigerators.
it's actually a drawer that opens up,
it had four complimentary bottles of water in it
and we filled it up with stuff that we've picked up from
the nearest 7-Eleven convenience store,
which is about two blocks away
in basement level two of the Ginza Subway Station.
All right, so let's go ahead
and take a look at the bathroom.
Two parts, first the toilet in the room,
it's a total toilet that you can flush right here,
light flush, big flush, little flush.
It has all the bidets and this and that, so fancy,
though not as fancy as the last hotel room we were in,
that had open and closing lids, this one doesn't.
And then there's this part of the bathroom bathroom
in a separate room with a separate door that we could close,
goodbye, hello, come back, all right.
So there's a fairly good size bathtub here in the room,
it's not amazingly large,
but you can get in this to do some soaking.
And then over here there is a single
handheld thing for the shower.
Kind of disappointing that there wouldn't maybe
be a rain hat or some other things like that,
but it's a good size in here
and I like that there's this whole door
just to close off and things,
separate bathroom versus the toilet,
so people can be doing two businesses at the same time.
Hey Topher, now that we've seen around the hotel,
do you know what time it is?
- It's hotel review time.
- It's time for us to do our hotel review
and for those of you who watch our videos regularly,
you'll know we rate things on a scale
of one to five, Topher.
So Topher, how many Tophers does this hotel get?
- Four Tophers
- It gets four Tophers.
So now let's talk about the pros and the cons
of why this hotel got four Tophers
and perhaps why it didn't get five.
So the first pro, is the location.
Ginza is the heart of Tokyo shopping district
and it's a pretty good location.
It's gonna be a call on when we come up to it.
Also pro, the rooms are big, they are roomy,
35 square meters is pretty huge by Tokyo standards.
We slept very well in this hotel room,
we slept like babies.
The air conditioning worked well,
it kept us cold, it kept us warm,
the beds were comfortable, the sheets were soft,
the pillows were soft.
On this trip we spent a lot of time on
Japanese buckwheat pillows that were kind of hard,
but these were nice and good.
There's ice machines on every floor
and I've been seriously lacking ice
for our last week in Japan, so I enjoyed having ice here.
The staff at the hotel was also quite friendly and helpful.
One of the staff members we checked in
suggested that we check out the neighborhood of Nakameguro
and that's actually turned out to be
one of our favorite little neighborhood in Tokyo
that we've never found before
if it wasn't for that staff member's recommendation.
And if you like high end shopping,
this would make a great base for you
because it's easy walking distance
from Tokyo's best department's stores,
best name brands, buy your stuff,
bring it back to your hotel and chill out.
You know what, I wasn't sure
if I would like the whole room set up.
It seemed kind of weird when we came in,
but it actually worked out quite well.
I liked the shower and bath set up,
that the shower was separate from the toilet room
and I also liked that in the shower
it was big and it was roomy
and the bathtub was big enough to soak in if you wanted to.
And actually in the earlier room review
when I showed the bathroom,
I forgot to mention there's actually some sliding panels
that can close off the bathroom
and make it a little more private from the rest of the room.
And then finally the other thing that comes down
in this window that I'm in,
the blackout curtain that comes down,
when that blackout curtain comes down,
it makes this room really black,
it keeps out all of the lights.
So if you're jet lagged and you're sleeping in the day,
you will have no problem doing that in this room.
Okay, Topher those are the pros.
Now let's talk about the cons.
We started with location and even though it was a pro,
it's also a con.
Ginza, while it's really close to Tokyo Station,
is not very well connected to Tokyo Station.
Taking the Marunouchi Subway Line
from Ginza to the Tokyo Station
makes you connect underground in a tunnel
that's like a 10-minute walk to Tokyo Station.
The walk from the hotel, the Tokyo station is 15 minutes
and so if you're transiting through Tokyo Station,
maybe the best way to get there is to take a taxi.
I don't know, it's hard to get from here to Tokyo Station
even though it's so close.
And while this is the heart of Tokyo shopping,
the neighborhood right around the hotel
can seem kind of sleepy and kind of boring
if you are not shopping.
Now I will say, about four blocks further away
near the train tracks, in the Yurakucho district
can be quite lively at night,
but nothing right around the hotel.
Also, if you're looking for convenience stores,
Tokyo is full of convenience stores,
but Ginza is a neighborhood that
sorely lacks convenience stores.
There is a 7-Eleven that's at exit B5
that I showed you earlier of the Ginza Subway Station.
And you'll also find a couple of Natural Lawsons
and things like that,
but they're three or four blocks out from the hotel.
Another con, at the price, this hotel is expensive.
It was approximately $350 per night
when we were staying here in February,
we booked with Hyatt points.
The rate was 25,000 Hyatt points a night.
Also, the breakfast really expensive,
the breakfast was $40 a night approximately
or a day per person.
So we did not eat the breakfast,
we did not dine in the bar.
We did not eat at the restaurant
because it was too expensive
and we weren't here on any sort of business expense account.
So all in all would we stay here again?
We absolutely would, that $350 is a little much,
maybe if we got it down under 300
certainly Hyatt points is a good redemption.
So if you are coming to Tokyo
and you wanna stay near shopping
or you want just a really big room,
well this hotel is a good one to consider.
As usual, we've got more videos up here in the screen
that you can watch.
We've also got links to description below
and we won't say goodbye
because we'll see you in the next video.