Tokyo Hotel    

I stayed at the Tokyu Stay Hotel in Yotsuya.  They have around 9 hotels in Tokyo to see the others go to the Tokyu Homepage.

    Pic 03 - View from the Hotel - east towards Tokyo.    View west towards Shinjuku.    

I was very impressed with this hotel.
 
Location : The hotel's location is excellent, it is 3 easy blocks from Yotsuya train station, that station is on 3 different train lines, which is very important in Tokyo where the idea of hiring a car is close to insane. 

Room : The room I had was 20m2 which is compact in size, but the Japanese are masters at space conservation, the room had features like no other. 

• Bathroom was of similar size to my flat with shower over a bath (a bath for someone 4 foot tall), wash basin, hair dryer, western style toilet (high tech of course).
• Bed was 'single and half' size wide and queen size in length (6' 10") which is good for someone tall like me. 
• TV/VCR rounding out the basic hotel features. 
  Then came the non-standard stuff, there was a
  • Washing machine / dryer combo near the door
  • Small kitchen, hot plate, microwave, sink, fridge, plates. 
  • Air conditioning with a remote control near the bed
  • Internet access via a LAN connection included in the price. (and it worked quite well - instructions are available at the desk)

Cost : For this room it was A$150/US$75 per night.   The hotel has various sizes and ones without a kitchen.

Train Line Notes : Yotsuya is on 2 subway lines (Marunouchi (Red) & Namboku (Green)) and on the JR Rail Chou line.  This means it is very easy to get anywhere.

Finding the Hotel : The only criticism I had of the hotel was when I arrived, I walked right past it, which wasn't fun dragging 2 bags.    At ground level it is very hard to see, there is only a small sign, around 1 foot square of the Tokyu Stay chain green/blue logo and what looks like office automatic sliding doors.  Reception is not on ground level, so you have to go in the doors and up to the 1st/3rd floor.  Check their map, the little 3 dot things on their map are the traffic lights.  Look up, the Tokyu Stay logo is on the top of the building.   Once you have the location, everything is great.

Breakfast : This is quite funny, the included breakfast is served downstairs at like a 24 hour Denny's store, basically you get toast and a drink.  This is probably one of the better ways of finding the hotel as its above the Jonathan's and near the 24 hour store.  (neither are actually a Denny's or a 7-11, but generic versions of the same thing)

Internet :  Ethernet LAN access is provided in the rooms.  The speed was good, it felt like some type of DSL (1.5Mbps?) when I was using it.  If you get the instructions and see some notes/corrections in English they might be mine - the instructions read like Japanese VCR instructions from 10 years ago.  :-)   The instructions on their webpage are better than the printed ones at the front desk.  Note the SMTP mail server setting, that is the thing you will probably need to change to send EMail from a Laptop mail

Recommendation : The hotel was very good, if your staying in Tokyo it comes highly recommended.

Hotel homepage : Yotsuya Tokyu Stay Hotel

Movies   
    Looking around the Room : movies/tokyo-01-room.wmv  (1244k)
    The LAN connection : movies/tokyo-02-lan.wmv   (517k)
    Look outside : movies/tokyo-03-outside.wmv   (1882k)