- [Narrator] 14 tips for staying at hotels in Japan.
- So, I thought it was only appropriate
to do this one in a hotel.
This is the 51st floor of the Osaka Marriott.
So, that's the night view of Osaka in the background.
So, to describe Japanese hotels in four words,
I would say clean, functional, small, and tired.
Yes, tired.
I find a lot of the hotels, they just,
while they're kept up maintenance-wise,
they look like something out of the 70s.
The best hotels are typically close to train stations
in the big cities.
I also suggest that if you're coming to Japan,
you book your hotels well in advance.
I know there's plenty of destinations
that you travelers out there will book last minute,
the night before, things like that.
If you're coming to Japan, particularly during busy seasons,
say like Tokyo in March or April for cherry blossoms,
you'll wanna book your hotels three months out
or you'll find yourself staying at a capsule hotel
or a love hotel,
because those are the only things available.
You know, Japan has all the big Western chains,
Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt.
I generally find those to be in the tired category,
though recently Marriott, Hyatt, and Hilton
have been making a reemphasis in Japan.
This Osaka Marriott's pretty fantastic.
The Andaz in Tokyo is pretty fantastic as well.
But, often there's not a really good price to room ratio
for the Western hotels.
They seem to charge a premium just for the name.
So, I'd suggest you look at
some of the Japanese chain hotels.
For example there's the Nikko hotels, ANA hotels,
JR hotels, JAL hotels,
those hotels will typically
have a better price to value ratio
and they'll often be in better locations.
I find, again, the Western chain hotels,
they're huge and so they've got to be way far
from the train station to get the big land
to build a mega hotel.
But, where you really want to be is close to transportation.
If you're on a budget, look into Toyoko Inn.
Toyoko Inn is, I don't really want to say the Motel 6
equivalent for Japan,
'cause Motel 6 usually has a negative connotation,
but Toyoko Inn is very good, clean business rooms,
though they are really, really small.
You may not have enough room in the floor
to open your suitcase.
You may be opening your suitcase up on your bed,
but if all you want is a room to sleep in,
Toyoko Inn is pretty good.
If you really want the Japanese experience,
then stay in a traditional Japanese hotel,
they are often called ryokans.
Sometimes they're hard to get in the big cities,
you'll often find the good ryokans are on the outskirts
or in the suburbs or in the country.
And so that brings me to the next category of hotels,
which are onsen hotels or Japanese hot spring hotels.
If you are making your way out of the city,
I'd highly encourage you to stay
at a traditional Japanese ryokan with an onsen,
which is a hot spring.
Stay at those hotels, book breakfast, book dinner.
They're the kinds of place you just stay for the night.
You probably only wanna spend one night in those hotels,
but they're really nice.
You know, you sleep on a traditional tatami mat with futons.
If you're interested in more of those,
I've got a whole bunch of reviews
of traditional ryokan hotels,
you'll find the link in the description below
to my Japan hotel review playlist,
if you want to see more about that
or any of the other hotels that I've stayed in.
I've got reviews on probably 30 Japanese hotels
all across Japan.
Another trend of hotels in the big cities
are capsule hotels.
Space in Japan is at a premium and so these capsule hotels,
they are basically just a little capsule big enough for you
to sleep in, maybe big enough for you to sit up in
to watch TV.
They're sort of designed for people
who missed the last train and need a place
to sleep until six in the morning when the trains go again.
They're really not designed for longterm stays.
Even, kind of, I don't know if I want to say odd
or on the scale, but another level
of the scale are love hotels.
If you only wanna get a hotel for an hour,
you can do that in Japan.
And there's this category of love hotels
that you basically book at an hourly rate.
They're called love hotels because
that would typically be where you would go
with your partner whom you love.
There's also a lot of hostels in Japan,
those are certainly bargain basement things.
And then even more bargain basement are manga cafes.
This is another new trend
and these are places where they're basically
a bookstore/a cafe that have comfy chairs
and they'll charge you something like 500 yen an hour
or 500 yen as an admission.
And then you can just sleep there in the chair
while you read your manga or something.
So, that's gonna be the cheapest place to stay.
Another option are sleeper trains,
'cause Japan is really big on trains
and actually still have quite a few sleeper trains
that you can sleep overnight
when you're going from one city to another.
When you're booking Japanese hotels,
you'll want to pay attention
to all the different plans and room types.
They're not like you know most American hotels
that just have a room.
Japanese hotels have a lot of different rooms
and then a lot of different plans that you can book,
with breakfast, without breakfast,
with dinner, without dinner, with the onsen package,
with this, with that.
So, pay close attention to those things
and look at the different room types.
If you don't want the tiniest room
then don't book the tiniest room,
you know, book a little bigger one.
I typically, in the Japanese chain hotels,
I typically don't book the cheapest or smallest room,
because it will be just a little bit too small for me.
Japan still has a lot of smoking rooms,
so if non-smoking is important to you, it is to me,
make sure you book a non-smoking room.
Many hotels also don't have parking,
so if parking's important to you, like you're renting a car
and you want to be sure you can park it at the hotel
make sure you check that in advance.
And then just the last tidbit I want to mention about hotels
is that most hotels will accept packages for you,
so if you're ordering something from like Amazon Japan,
you can have that shipped to your hotel
and they'll accept it, often a few days before you check in.
Well hey, that's it.
Those are all the major things you need to know
before you go to Japan.
You are well armed to visit the Land of the Rising Sun.
So, I hope you enjoyed this video and Topher does too.
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All right, thanks for watching.
Bye-bye.