For public transit, the location of this apartment is excellent. On a nice day, you can walk 15 easy minutes to Ikebukuro and spend some time there or get anywhere else in Tokyo very easily. On a cold/rainy day, you can walk 2-3 minutes and take the Kanamecho train to Ikebukuro in 2 minutes or Shinjuku or Shibuya directly in under 15 minutes. We also took the bus right outside our place to Azusawa and that took about 40 minutes.
There are four or five convenience stores (Family Mart, 7-Eleven, and Lawson’s) within a five-minute walk of this place, which we found very handy, especially with a baby. There is a full grocery store right down the street, as well as a takeout only sushi place, a place that sells foods for bento boxes (think fried chicken, candied sweet potatoes, seaweed salad, etc.), a Chinese restaurant, a curry place, a Doutor, a couple sit down sushi places, a horomon yakiniku restaurant, a burger place, and a fish ramen place that supposedly on of the best in the city. These places are all with five minutes walk. There is also a good drug store very close. For breakfast, we went to Jonathan’s, about three minutes away, which is open 24 hours and serves western and Japanese breakfast. Its not great, but it’s ultra easy and predictable and has a drink bar with matcha lattes.
The apartment itself is perfectly adequate; it’s like a studio apartment with an additional room. There is no view to speak of, but it gets a surprising amount of light. There is some road noise from cars and ambulances, but we sleep with a with a noise machine, so it wasn’t a huge issue for us. It would be a little cramped with more than two adults, but so would most places in Tokyo. At times, we wished the beds in the main room were in the tatami room instead, so we could have some extra space.
We had two adults and a 16-month old and it was fine for us, although it could have been a little bit more baby proof (our son kept on turning on the stove, opening/closing the cabinets, and getting into the garbage. We slept in the tatami room, but the curtain was not dark enough, we had to take the darkening curtains from the main room and put them in the second room so our son wouldn’t wake up at sunrise. We spent most of our time in this room because it was more child-friendly, but our son always wanted to play in the other room. The mattresses were fine and the duvets were super soft, but we would have liked more pillows.
The bathroom was fine and the water pressure was good. The washing machine was useful , but there wasn’t much room to hang clothes and it took two days for things to dry.
We appreciated the kids toys and our son loved one of the puzzles so much we were considering asking if we could take it home. The landlady responded quickly to messages and was very understanding. She even took us to a nearby hotel and helped us catch the airport shuttle to HND, which was so much easier than trying to figure out how to get there from Ikebukuro with our kid and giant suitcases.
We communicated with the landlord all in Chinese, but I would imagine English would be fine with the translation feature here. Not a lot of communication was necessary.
Overall, I would highly recommend this place for a couple, 3-4 close friends, or a small family with older/more relaxed children.