- A video review of the Asakusa Hotel Hatago in
Tokyo, Japan.
This hotel is one of the smallest hotel rooms
that I've stayed in.
I'm gonna show you just how small everything in
here is.
This is room 801, you know how I know it's 801?
Cause it comes on this little
rubik cube and says 801 and it has a key.
So before I show you around the hotel,
I wanna show you how narrow it is.
It is this building right here.
This is the left most side of the building
and this is the right most side of the building.
Nine story's up.
I think they might be expanding in next door,
into buildings though that look equally as narrow
as the original building.
So I wonder, was somebody standing here
and saw a really narrow empty piece of property
and said, "You know what I see right there?
A nine-story hotel."
You know what I would see there?
Probably a vending machine.
This room, I think it's about 14 square meters,
it has two twin beds in it.
It's kinda special cause it has tatami mats on the floor.
If you look down here, so you have to take
off your shoes when you come in.
And they let you know that at the front desk.
But these beds, even as twin beds,
they're actually not twin beds,
they're single beds.
These night stands really tiny night stands,
I've never seen such a small night stand.
Let me come over here and show you the desk.
(upbeat music)
Right here's the desk in the room,
I can't really,
I can't really get underneath get.
This is the chairs in the room
and these neat little bean bags that are full
of beads.
This is the table in the room,
again small.
You know what else is small in the room?
The refrigerator.
There's a refrigerator right here in this corner
and this is like the smallest refrigerator
I've ever had in a hotel room.
It is just, it's the perfect size on a hot day
for Topher to go right in there.
Almost, he's actually a little bit too big to go in there.
And there's a little,
this is the lamp, again very small.
The Kleenex box, right smaller than a typical
size Kleenex box.
What else is small?
You know what's small?
The closet's small.
The closet is right here, it's
just a couple of hooks on the wall.
Small little entry way,
we wondered what this curtain was by the front door.
And there's just a window
that I think faces nothing.
And so the final part of the room I wanna show ya.
A small bathroom. The first thing though is you go into the
bathroom, it has toilet slippers.
So you put your feet into here and
wear these special toilet slippers
to come in here into
the small bathroom.
I kinda wanna go in the bathtub
so I need to take those slippers off.
But to show you how small this is,
I cannot stretch my arms across this way.
The bathtub is a good deep soaking bathtub though.
Sink and
one of these really fancy bidet toilet to
keep your rear-end nice and clean.
That bathtub and shower has nice laundry
string you can pull out to dry your clothes
or towels, when I took a shower
in this bathroom, one thing I noticed
is the ceiling is really quite low.
I'm six feet tall and if I stand on my
tippy toes like this,
then I pretty much touch the ceiling.
So if you're six foot three, six foot four,
then you're pretty much gonna have to be
hunching down in this bathroom.
I forgot to point out on the small desk
there's also a really small trashcan.
Take a look at that right there,
that's not for any big trash.
They also give fabric and air freshener
so you can use this to freshen up your clothes.
The clock is a tiny little clock right here
by the bed and I do like these lamps
that are by the bed, they're kind of like
this bold Japanese paper style.
And I also like behind the bed
the thing that kinda looks like the headboard,
this kind of neat screen back there
that does roll up to reveal a window.
When it's rolled up, you can see the window
right there, it has some kind of rice paper
shades on it.
So taking a look out that window in the daytime,
this is the view, not much a view to speak of
cause it's got bars on it but it is nice
cause the window does open so you can get fresh
air in it but it is kind of noisy up here.
You can see the roads and you do hear the sirens.
So the windows not all that great.
As far as that window goes.
If you going from the hotel from Asakusa Station,
the best exit to take is A2B,
you can come out of that elevator and
then just walk down this main street,
about halfway down this block and the hotel
will be on your left.
It's also just about two blocks from
Sensō-ji Temple.
You can see Tokyo Skytree here.
And you should definitely make sure to check out
the Hasaki Building.
The building that looks like a beer.
And once you're ready to go in,
you just approach this thing which is a door
and you get into a little staircase right here.
If you can't go down the stairs cause you
big luggage, there's and entrance
in the back with no stairs.
As you go in, you'll see the very small lobby
with one bench and a desk.
On the ground floor, just past the elevator,
is a laundry room, where you can have a
washing machine, 200 yen per load or
dryers a 100 yen.
And just outside the door
is the vending machine.
So if you're thirsty,
you can get a supply of tasty Japanese beverages.
If you're looking for a beer vending machine,
you'll find that up on the ninth floor
where breakfast is served.
The rooftop of the hotel has a small
view balcony where you can see the view
of Asakusa, the river down below
and the Tokyo Skytree in all of it's glory.
The tallest building in Japan.
The rooftop deck is only open from 7 AM
to 10 AM, but you can ask the front desk
for a key and go up there at any time.
Oh, and if you wanna know more about the Tokyo
Skytree and what the view looks like from up there.
Well, I've got a video all about that,
you'll find the link to that in my Japan playlist
in the description below.
And if you're curious what that view looks like
at night, well here it is, they're got a
picture right in front of the rooftop door
to show you.
And they let you know when the Skytree is lit up
until 11 PM every night.
Checking in, they provide you this detailed list of
dos and don'ts as they highlight as they go
down and review it with you.
One thing that's interesting to know,
is if you are checking out and then checking back in
again, they can hold any luggage that you want
until you check back in, really good if
you're taking some day trips outside of Tokyo,
they'll hold your big bags, you don't have to carry
them around.
Okay Topher, do you know what time it is?
- It's a bear review time.
- It's time for us to review the hotel
and for those of you who watch our hotel reviews
regularly, you'll know we'll rate things on
a scale of one to five Tophers.
Okay, Topher, so how many Tophers is this hotel
going to get?
- 3.5 Tophers.
- Three and a half Tophers.
Okay, so let's talk about why it got three
and a half Tophers, the pros and the cons.
So the pro, first of all, this location in
Central Tokyo is really great.
Just a couple minute walk from Asakusa Station.
Near Sensō-ji, in the shadow of the Skytree
and that walk from the train station,
it's like half a block
or something, it's really quick.
If you know that elevator to go out of
which I showed you earlier.
So that's really nice and it's really nice
cause the price is really, really inexpensive.
14,000 yen, the equivalent of 140 US dollars,
maybe even a little less.
It's really nice for a hotel that
feels new, feels clean, just had a great vibe to it.
Now what are the cons for this hotel?
Well,
it's small.
So if you're not prepared for a small room
then this might be kinda,
this might be a shock to you.
And so I should mention that this three
and a half Topher rating is for hotel
that's in Tokyo.
Tokyo hotels are small, they can be expensive
if they're big and so this rating
doesn't really compare to a rating that
we've given to hotels in Las Vegas
where we'll give three and a half Tophers
to a hotel that's 10 times the size.
Cause that's just how it is in Las Vegas
but this is fairly typical size and the
price is really good here.
Included in the price, was complimentary
breakfast, there's a really cheerful
breakfast room up on the ninth floor of the hotel.
This hotel has nine floors total.
And each floor has four rooms except
for the top floor which has two rooms
and then little breakfast area.
You get a choice of Japanese breakfast or Western breakfast.
We picked the Japanese breakfast which was
actually quite tasty and I would say
beats a Residence Inn breakfast any day.
We slept pretty well, we just spent
one night here, we spent one night here
and we flew in from Hinata,
it's nice cause you can take a direct train
from Hinata here, you don't have to transfer.
It took about 40 minutes, we were quite
tired and so we slept well.
I will point out that it does seem
kind of noisy with street noise.
So if you're a light sleeper, the street noise
might kinda effect you.
I think that's most big of an issue in these
twin rooms, the O1 rooms that are facing
the street.
Oh Topher fell down, he's tired.
Okay, re-setting now that we got Topher up.
The biggest cons really just how small and
cramped everything is.
This is definitely not like child
friendly if you're gotta stroller.
It's definitely not elderly friendly,
people who have like mobility challenges.
You know, these beds they really low
which might be hard for people to get up and down from.
On the con side, I'm not really in love with how
they did this threshold by the front door.
There's two levels, this level right here
is lower than this level right here.
I had to put my shoe right here
to let myself know that when I walk from
the bed into the bathroom,
that I don't accidentally walk off this ridge
right here and roll my ankle at night.
Also, the bathroom door, it is typical
for Japanese bathroom doors, it has like
an inch at the bottom, so any noises or sounds
or things like that come right through that.
And speaking of the beds, I did say
we slept well.
We were here for one night, I'm not sure I'd
want to spend lots of nights here because
this mattress is kinda hard and frankly the pillow
this is one of these like
it's got the buckwheat shells in it.
And it's only one and so the pillows kinda low,
I would've liked a softer mattress and a little
better pillow.
But I do think this hotel is good
on your way in or out of Tokyo.
Since there's a direct train, you can
get here without transfers from Nereto or Hinata.
That makes it pretty convenient but it's
not really big enough to spend a long time in.
So now the question is, would we stay here again?
Again for one night on our way in or on our way out.
I think it's pretty reasonable if I'm spending
three or four days in Tokyo.
Then personally we would probably pick one that was a bit
bigger but if budget is one of your primary
concerns, then I think this is a good selection for
a budget friendly hotel in Central Tokyo.
On one more note, I mentioned this location
is really great, if this hotel's a little
too small for you, there's actually a lot of
hotels in this Asakusa neighborhood.
So take a look at some others, you might
find some other ones that have a little bigger rooms.
In this hotel, it has actually has one room
that's a little bigger than one this.
They have a deluxe twin room that's
three more square meters but if you wanna
book that one, you have to email them
for availability.
Now that being said, we got a lot more
videos on Tokyo, we've even got more video
reviews of other hotels in Tokyo.
So if you wanna check those out, you can click
right here or you'll find links to the subscription
below, as usual, we won't say goodbye because
we'll see you in the next video.