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Places to Stay in Japan

Advice on Affordable Lodging

Updated December 29, 2005

There are are a variety of ways to stretch your yen and to travel in comfort in Japan. It starts with doing your homework before you arrive in the country and by deciding how you much money you will have to allocate to lodging expenses. From there, careful planning can give you comfortable accommodations throughout the country. On a budget of no more than $50 per person per night, you can find clean lodging throughout Japan, and with the arrival of international budget hotels in Japan, the price for lodging may begin to drop. The typical tourist will chose between

  • Hotels
  • Ryokans or Pensions
  • Minshukans
  • Hostels
  • Campgrounds
  • Homestays

Hotels

In a country that places a premium on sanitation and esthetics, it is easy to find opulent grand hotels in most major cities. At this point in time, those are the hotels that tend to be listed on the major travel sites. This may give you a distorted view of hotel prices with the expectation that you can not get a double room for less than $100. With some online shopping and planning, we held our costs below that price at all of the hotels we stayed in. But it generally takes some advance planning to lock in those prices. Also, it is important to know that it is easier to find hotels in larger cities than in small towns and that you while you can travel without reservations, when you get to smaller towns, you may have problems finding rooms.

Let me start with a recommendation for the Toyoko Inns. We found this hotel chain when we were staying in Kumamoto. It was centrally located, exceptionally clean and staffed with very helpful clerks. The clerks had good English skills, enough to answer at least the essential questions, and some were quite fluent. The rooms are small, as is typical in Japan, but have modern bathroom facilities and a small refrigerator. Also included in the cost of the room is a tasty breakfast of rice balls and miso soup (which we found to be quite satisfying), coffee and free access to the internet via lobby computers. When we subtracted the cost of a breakfast and internet access fees, it seemed like the room cost us about $35.00 per person. This is not an economy chain but is a very pleasant business class hotel company, comparable to Embassy Suites in the US, and most of the hotels are new. After discovering the chain in Kumamota, we stayed at its properties in Nagasaki, Yamaguchi, Izumo, Himeji and Tokyo (couldn't get rooms at a Toyoko Inn in Kyoto) and were pleased with the service at every locaiton. With its low-cost parking and convenient laundry facilities, the Toyoku Inn is usually the best lodging bargain you can find in most cities. If possible, make your reservations in advance, especially if you are traveling during the summer or holidays because smart travelers quickly fill these hotels. Researching this article, I found numerous foreign travelers who had similarly high regards for this chain. There is another chain with a similar name, Tokyu Inns, that appears to have similar riooms and services but a bit higher price.

From the US, we used e-stay.jp, orbitz.com and http://www.tabiplaza.net/japanhotels/ to find reservationss. If you find a low-cost room through one of the major travel marketing sites, you can be pretty certain that you are paying significantly less than what you'd pay if you just dropped into the hotel.

We began making reservations about 4 months before we planned to depart for Japan. It is good to start that early if you plan to stay at hotels recommended in the popular guide books because these hotels quickly fill up. But to if you are using a reservation website you may find that most hotels haven't listed their available rooms that far in advance. For many hotels, reservations can not be made more than 90 days in advance.

In particular we wanted rooms for our first night of arrival so that we had a destination when we cleared customs. After a long, relatively sleepless flight, you don't want to try to find a room, especially if you are traveling by foot. We were flying into Tokyo and were trying to find a great bargain. The hotel we stayed at was the Sakura Hotel which our guide book highlighted as a great bargain in a good location. The hotel is popular with foreign tourists but rooms are small and the shower and toilets are down the hall; there is a small restaurant in the lobby and internet access which costs about $1.00 for 10 minutes. The Sakura Hotel t is a good value but the convenience of the Toyoko Inns, with multiple locations in Toyoko, free breakfast and internet, were actually a better deal for us.

If you are looking for a bargain in hotel lodging the two main choices are capsule hotels and love hotels. Capsule hotels provide a small unit (think of it as a very tiny rigid pup tent) that you can sleep in with storage for a backpack or small piece of luggage. Showers and toilets are shared facilities and most have a place to grab breakfast. They cater to Japanese businessmen looking for low-price lodging and some do not accept women patrons. You may find capsule hotels listed on some of the Japanese reservation services and you will be impressed by the prices. If you aren't clostrophobic, they can be a very good bargain.

The other bargain beds in Japan are found at love hotels. The businesses provide couples a place to stay for a few hours, with most of their check-ins occurring during evening hours. If you arrive after 10 pm., you can generally check in for the night by selecting the "STAY" option. If you only want a brief interlude, you select "REST." The rooms are generally large, clean and have their own bathroom facilities. The hotels are designed to create a playful atmosphere conducive to a romantic rendevous; some have small gifts shops, some have serve breakfasts; all are designed to protect the privacy of the users. The hotels are easily identified by their cute names (often in English) and the neon that lights their signs. These are not "no-tell motels"; they are usually well-maintained properties that serve a need for a comfortable space where couples can spend some time together. Generally you'll save some money staying at the properties.

Ryokans and Pensions

If you want to be pampered during your stay, Japanese ryokans will allow you to be stay in luxurious comfort. These traditional inns have served affluent patrons for years, providing bathing facilities, hearty meals and Japanese tatami sleeping spaces. Many of the properties have en-suite toilets and showers, though older properties may still have shared showers and toilets. Most provide Japanese style sleeping which means tatami mats and folding mattresses. It is comfortable but a change from western style beds. Like hotels, there are a range of prices and as the level of comfort and convenience increases so does the price. Expect to pay at least $70.00 per person (based on double occupancy) to stay in a ryokan, though the general rate is usually $100 to $150 per person per night. This cost usually includes a multi-course meal and use of a hot-spring or other heated bath. So you may want to do the math and realize that the cost of the room includes at least $20 per person in meal and bath fees and make a one night stay at a ryokan possible. You wil find many ryokans listed in regular hotel websites but you can specifically seek a ryokan at japaneseguesthouses.com.

If you are paying that muct for a hotel room, be certain that the operators speak English if you don't speak Japanese or you may have a difficult time enjoying your posh stay. We did not stay in any ryokans but stayed in a very wonderful pensione/bed and breakfast near Mt. Aso. The very gracious owner did her best to make us comfortable and cooked what my husband recalls as some of the best food he tasted in Japan, but the stay would have gone less smoothly if our son wasn't along to translate.

Minshukan

Minshukan are usually bed and breakfast operations that provide you with a clean, comfortable place to stay. A typical ryokan will provide Japanese style bedding, have shared bathroom facilities and may include breakfast in the cost of the night's stay. The attraction of a minshukan is typically price, which is lower than ryokans and many hotels.

Youth Hostels

There is a good network of youth hostels in Japan and you will be surprised to find that they are clean, well run and reasonably priced but with the better accommodations, you'll find the price is a bit higher than you would pay in North America or Europe.. The biggest drawback to youth hostels is location; we discovered many of the youth hostels were far from the center of town, which may be acceptable to drivers but for those who are traveling by train and bus, the locations may be very inconvenient and you may spend what you saved by not staying in a hotel or minshukan on transportation. This was particularly true for the hostel in Hiroshima. We stayed at a delightful hostel in Osaka just south of the center of city. It was exceptionally clean and staffed with English speaking clerks. One of the big plusses was that student from around the world found this hostel so we had a great time with other folks staying there.

One of the best websites for finding hotel rooms at great prices is Bookings.Net, a company in the Netherlands which has great resources for Europe but will also get you a really exceptional price on rooms anywhere on the planet. (We found clean rooms at $80 per night in downtown Tokyo through this site).

Temples

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Homestays

There are many programs that will arrange the opportunity for you to stay in a Japanese home. The fees may vary depending on the relationship of the family to the program and its participants. Our son stayed with a family for three weeks while he was in high school and 8 years later he still visits them. The physical differences between Japanese and American housing will be surprising; like Europe, homes are space and energy efficiient; despite high summer temperatures and humidity, air conditioning is not as common as it is in the US and it is difficult to warm most homes to 72 degrees during the cold winters.