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Killer View
Room With a Killer View :: Seek the Origin of Kobe Beef, Find Good Views Here
July 31, 2008 at 9:47 AM | 0 Comments
We are suckers for a room with a killer view. We find that we are even more likely to forgive some minor hotel inconveniences if we can stare out the window at something pretty--yeah we are that shallow. Let's help out our fellow hotel mavens by uploading rooms with killer views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. We will feature our favorites in this space from time to time. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number of the hot view.
Seemingly a staple in every high-end restaurant these days, Kobe beef actually originated in the city of Kobe, Japan. You can read more on this Japanese port city here but if you're interested in a hotel with great views of the harbor consider the Portopia Hotel.
Good views and the Portopia (an unoriginal name we have to say) seem to go hand-in-hand because even looking at the hotel itself makes a good snapshot--it's an interestingly-built ellipse-shaped building, built on a manmade island in the Kobe harbor.
Then once you're inside the hotel, your room might have a view over the Osaka Bay and Wakayama Peninsula or like this one, it might look back towards the city of Kobe and especially at night, this is spectacular.
Design Hotels
Tokyo's Claska Hotel Packs in a lot For Just Nine Rooms
April 9, 2008 at 10:57 AM | 2 Comments
How rare, we thought, arriving at the Claska Hotel website and seeing a button for "English." An independent Japanese hotel that has an English version of their site. Alas, it seems that the button labeled English is the only thing in that language, apart from a few other headings that also lead to tantalizingly interesting pages that we can't read, and you can't actually click through on "English"--we hope it's a "coming soon".
Apart from that problem, the Claska looks gorgeous. It's just been listed as one of the top five design hotels in Japan. It's small, just nine rooms, but also features an art gallery, bookshop, organic restaurant and apparently even a poodle parlor. There's even an online shop which sells lovely-looking Japanese stuff: tea sets, a fan, even a broom, all without ugly hotel logos.
A night at the Claska ain't cheap, with double starting at over 62,000 Yen (US$600). The website suggests the possibility of weekly residence rates too, but they probably don't get much cheaper. They might throw in a free broom, though.
International Hotel WiFi
International Hotel WiFi: Comfort Hotel Gets It Almost Right in Hiroshima
March 25, 2008 at 9:36 AM | 0 Comments
Head for technology-rich Japan and you might be expecting that the hotel WiFi scenario improves a bit. Well it does, a bit, depending on where you stay. In beautiful Hiroshima, we've found that the Comfort Hotel Hiroshima does a good job on providing internet access.
The Comfort Hotel's website boasts all kinds of tech-based amenities, including a computer to use for free in the lobby, computer hook-ups and work desks in all rooms, and high-speed, FREE wireless internet access everywhere. Recent guests even confirm that this is true, with the following warning:
There appears to be a wireless access point on every floor! The instructions in the room compendium tell you how to connect in Japanese, but anyone used to using wireless connections should be able to get by. The compendium contains the WPA-PSK key you need and it is written in English. So worked great for connecting my notebook and PDA.
So like WiFi nearly the whole world over, it's not as straightforward as it should be, but it's there. As an added bonus, the Comfort Hotel Hiroshima is near Peace Park and the Hiroshima Castle too, so when you've finished surfing or working, the sightseeing is at your doorstep.
[Photo: kang_a_ji]
Japan Hotels
Super Exclusive Boutique Hotel: Ginzan Hot Spring Fujiya Inn in Tokyo
February 11, 2008 at 1:35 PM | 0 Comments
Most of the time when we talk about luxury or boutique hotels we are referring to a Ritz Carlton, or W Hotel, or one of the Morgan's Hotel Group's spectacularly designed locations - but the Ginzan Hot Spring Fujiya Inn near Tokyo has all of those places beat - for one, there are only 8 rooms - giving the hotel a total capacity of 16 guests.
Here's the story behind this 350 year old hotel, which was just fully renovated in mid-2006:
The owner, Jean Fuji, who is originally from San Francisco, began studying as a traditional Japanese okami in 1991. Those who are okami personally cook all the guests meals, serves the guests, does the housekeeping and tries to predict each and every guests want and need - before they want it. Hmm, I think okami should be a required class in all hotel management schools.
The best part?
The nightly rate is surprisingly on par with your typical big-city luxury hotel - the highest rate currently listed on their website comes out to about $472 per night, the lower room rates start at $325 - and that's not even including the discounts which are currently being offered for the winter months.
For those smoking guests out there, the hotel has a strict no-smoking policy, good thing because except for the nails holding the wood together - everything is flammable.
Anti-View
Room with an Anti-View: Beautiful Chunky Iron in Kagoshima
July 5, 2007 at 11:35 AM | 0 Comments
You know the scene. You open the door to your brand new hotel room, run over to the window, open the blinds and bam, you are hit with the anti-view. Maybe you are looking down a dirty alley, witnessing a drug deal, staring at an air shaft in the face, or seeing a brick wall. Whatever you are viewing it is not extremely pleasurable. Help out your fellow hotel mavens by uploading your anti-views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number with the not-so-easy-on-the-eyes view.
We've been told that the Japanese culture specializes in finding the beauty in any situation, no matter how small that beauty might be. We're interested in knowing exactly where the beauty is in this view from the New Nishino Hotel in Kagoshima, south-west Japan.
The city of Kagoshima isn't on every tourist's list, but it should be since some call it "the Naples of the Eastern World". Apparently the New Nishino is actually not a bad place to base yourself while exploring Kagoshima's aquarium, drinking its sweet potato alcohol and ferrying out to the active volcano (we love a steaming volcano). The photographer himself admits that this hotel "lacks a view" but promises that "its location makes up for it".
[Photo: Minamitane]
Related Stories:
· Volcano Tourism: Spewing in Russia [Jaunted]
Cubicle Dreamin'
Cubicle Dreamin': Boiling Eggs and Boiling Baths
June 15, 2007 at 10:30 AM | 0 Comments
Cubicle Dreamin' is a feature in which we ask the hotel mavens to take some time out of their busy work day, surf the Internet, and tell us what hotel they wish they could beam themselves to right that very second--all on the slave driving companies dime, of course. Oh, like these people aren't surfing aimlessly anyway--at least now their purposeless clicking will be cobbled together into useful hotel stories--we hope. Have a destination hotel you are just dying to leave your cube for? Send the story our way.
In this episode, Hotel Maven Amanda K heads to Japan. Enjoy.
Staying in any kind of traditional Japanese hot spring resort has got to be a highlight on any travel plans, but I've just stumbled across the details of an onsen I was lucky enough to spend a weekend in some years back, and I'd just die to get back there.
Some rich Japanese friends once spoilt me at the Asanoya Hotel in Hyogo prefecture (north-east of Osaka). There is nothing that's not incredible about this place: just start from the outside, which looks like a traditional Japanese castle. It's located in the small village of Yumura, famed for its natural hot springs, which produce 3000 tons of almost boiling water daily. In the streets of the village, there are even opportunities to boil eggs in the spring--with the strange yet unique outcome that, when properly boiled, the yolk is solid but the white is runny.
If weirdly-boiled eggs aren't your thing, then the feasts provided in the Asanoya will tempt you. They'll serve you dinner in your room, and it'll be a gorgeous feast following the kaisekiryori principles, which basically means your food will look like an artwork and it'll taste incredible too.
Finally, you can clean up in the separate men's and women's hot springs, located in the ground floor of the hotel. As long as you're a little familiar with onsen etiquette (for example, wash yourself before getting in the bath), you'll come out refreshed, relaxed and ready for bed on the futons laid out by the staff in about the same area you just ate dinner. The good news is that with a weaker yen, prices are more affordable now: a basic double room including dinner and breakfast costs 36,000 yen (about $300) on a weeknight, or you can splurge on a room with your own private hot spring for 73,000 yen ($600).
Related Stories:
· Bathing in a Japanese Onsen [HotelChatter]
· Japanese Touches in Ski Hotel [HotelChatter]
Hotel Theft
$1 Million Golden Tub Disappears
May 30, 2007 at 4:32 PM | 0 Comments
A hotel in Japan is very very sorry today. Sorry that they ever allowed a bathtub made of 18 karat gold and worth nearly $1 million to sit in one of their shared bathrooms for men unguarded and unprotected, thus allowing some clever thieves to haul it out of the place.
The golden tub weighing 176 pounds (pictured above in 2005) was stolen from the 10th floor of the Kominato Hotel Mikazuki in Kamogawa, just south of Tokyo:
But police said they found no signs that the heavy bathtub had been dragged out of the hotel. "The door to the room had been locked with chains, but the chains were found cut off this morning," a police spokesman said. "We really don't know how this happened at this stage. But what we can assume now is that more than one person was involved in this incident." A similar bathtub in the hotel's shared bathroom for women is still in place, he said.
Perhaps they were inspired by the Today Show's segment last week on Hotel Theft which included a story of a stolen marble fireplace from the Four Seasons Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
Related Stories:
· $1M Gold Bathtub Stolen From Japan Hotel [Forbes]
· Light-fingered Japanese thieves nab 80kg gold tub [Washington Post]
Hotel News
What's In A Name at Radisson Narita?
May 8, 2007 at 10:00 AM | 1 Comment
Press releases are busily spreading the word that Japan's Radisson Hotel Narita Airport has changed its name, as of May 4, to the Radisson Hotel Narita. What's in a name, you might ask? Well, they want to be known as a big hotel "near Tokyo with off-site meeting facilities", rather than just an airport hotel.
Fair point, but there are a couple of problems. It's debatable whether the alleged "one and a half hour's distance from Tokyo" is first of all, really "near" Tokyo, and second of all, what kind of traffic conditions you need to get from this hotel to Tokyo in ninety minutes? TripAdvisor clearly ranks it in its list of Narita hotels, not Tokyo. On top of that, Radisson's own website hasn't yet changed the name, still holding onto the Airport at the end of it. Perhaps it's not so important to them as the press releases make out, or maybe they've realised that getting airport customers is actually better business.
[Photo: Lawrence Sinclair]
Related Stories:
· Radisson Hotel Narita reviews [TripAdvisor]
· Radisson Hotel Narita Announces Updated Name [eTravel]
Cubicle Dreamin'
Cubicle Dreamin': Spoil Me In Tokyo's Mandarin Oriental
March 26, 2007 at 11:45 AM | 0 Comments
Cubicle Dreamin' is a feature in which we ask the hotel mavens to take some time out of their busy work day, surf the Internet, and tell us what hotel they wish they could beam themselves to right that very second--all on the slave driving companies dime, of course. Oh, like these people aren't surfing aimlessly anyway--at least now their purposeless clicking will be cobbled together into useful hotel stories--we hope. Have a destination hotel you are just dying to leave your cube for? Send the story our way.
In this episode, Hotel Maven Amanda K picks out her first choice in Tokyo. Enjoy.
Pictures were already enough to make me want to stay at the Mandarin Oriental Tokyo, which recently picked up an award for being one of the "most beautiful public spaces" in Japan's capital. Then I checked some customer reviews and found crazily positive titles littering the page: "Absolutely stunning!", "Don't stay anywhere else", "High expectations were more than met" and "Fantastic splurge". Plus a comment from a travel agent with 25 years' experience who was prompted to write her first online review ever because Tokyo's Mandarin was just so good.
Sitting right in the middle of Tokyo in the Nihonbashi district, I can just imagine dreamily staring over the city lights from the 38th floor, or popping down to the 36th to enjoy nearly 10,000 square feet of spa. Rooms are categorized according to their view: that might be to Tokyo Bay, the Palace, or even Mount Fuji, or all three if you book the presidential suite. I think that if you're going to survive a city as big and busy as Tokyo, you have to spoil yourself to have the ultimate place to come home to at night, and that sounds like the Mandarin Oriental at the moment--arigatou!
[Photo: MarkJL]
Related Stories:
· Mandarin Oriental Tokyo reviews [TripAdvisor]
· Japan's With the Style [HotelChatter]
Ski Hotels
Karoake is Just One of This Ski Hotel's Priorities
February 27, 2007 at 11:34 AM | 0 Comments
For a mid-range ski-in ski-out hotel in the Shiga Kogen area near Nagano, the Hotel Sunroute Shiga-Kogen seems to fit the bill. It's next to lifts and right near a ski school too, and is easy to reach by bus from Nagano--it takes an hour but the bus stops right outside the hotel. So, bus in the front, ski out the back, then limp back for the night to enjoy Western style hospitality.
But the Western style hospitality the hotel is so proud of does (fortunately, we think) come with a few Japanese touches. Standard room amenities include a yukata (Japanese bath robe), a hot spring towel and a tea set, and a karaoke room is, of course, a very important fixture of the hotel facilities. The hotel modestly claims it is "probably" the best mid-range property in Shiga Kogen.
If that doesn't tempt you, then the view of the mountains should.
Photo: [plastickitty]
Related Stories:
· Ski Japan at the Green Plaza Joetsu [HotelChatter]
Ski Hotels
Ski Japan at the Green Plaza Joetsu
February 20, 2007 at 9:26 AM | 0 Comments
Heard that a big ski tournament is currently taking place in Japan? Well, now you have, and all the fans are apparently hanging out at the Hotel Green Plaza Joetsu at the Joetsu Kokusai mountain resort in Niigata prefecture, northern Japan. With a ski station "zero minutes" away, you can get swooshing fast, plus enjoy Japanese meals on your return. Previous guests describe the hotel in various ways, from "a massive mock tudor mansion" to:
a breathtaking German or Swiss style structure that seems to go on forever. It has about a million rooms all with good heaters and private baths.
While Japanese ski resorts are apparently becoming increasingly packed with Aussies and Kiwis who don't want to head all the way to Europe or North America for their off-season ski holidays, we still reckon it makes a nice alternative to skiing near home, and you can combine a bit of cultural travel with a few days on the slopes.
[Photo: patchmonkey]
Related Stories:
· Joetsu Kokusai reviews [Snow in Japan]
· Live From the Nippon Open [Freeskier Mag]
Cubicle Dreamin'
Cubicle Dreamin', Part II: Bathing in A Japanese Onsen
January 4, 2007 at 3:05 PM | 0 Comments
Cubicle Dreamin' is a feature in which we ask the hotel mavens to take some time out of their busy work day, surf the Internet, and tell us what hotel they wish they could beam themselves to right that very second--all on the slave driving companies dime, of course. Oh, like these people aren't surfing aimlessly anyway--at least now their purposeless clicking will be cobbled together into useful hotel stories--we hope. Have a destination hotel you are just dying to leave your cube for? Send the story our way.
In our second episode for the day, Hotel Maven AmandaK let's us know where she wants to drop her skivvies. Enjoy.
As the new year begins and the restfulness of the holiday season is swiftly forgotten, as the entire working year looms ahead and the aches and pains of working hard all day return, I'm dreaming of a relaxing stay at a Japanese hot spring resort. It was in a Japanese spa hotel that I lost my fear of public nudity (as the only Westerner, plenty of people were interested in what I looked like - it was a time to get over it or melt and die). Now I'm ready to strip off and sink and soak in one of those scalding scenic baths, as scenic as possible, please.
That's why I'd like to head to the Kansuiro Ryokan in Hakone, not far from Tokyo and with views to Mount Fuji. It even makes it onto a Lonely Planet Bluelist of perfect places to propose, so it must be good. A 400-year-old inn in a heritage building, it comes with all the best of ryokan life: an amazing meal is served to you in your room, and your bed is made up for you (on the floor, probably near where you at your meal) while you're away in the baths. And all of that while you're wearing your bathrobe. Relaxing luxury at its best. Take me there!
[Photo: Erik Jaeger]
