This place is excellent for first-time trips to Japan. Location-wise, it’s fantastic. Otsuka is a quiet but active neighbourhood, on the Yamanote Line (the vital one for major tourist and travelling purposes) equidistant between Shinjuku and Ueno and also Shibuya and Tokyo. You could walk to Ikebukuro within 25 minutes if you wanted to - but the train options are so efficient and cheap that there’s not much of a point! We saw many of the main areas of Tokyo - Shinjuku, Chiyoda, Shibuya, Ueno, Odaiba, Akihabara, Ikebukuro, Kanda, Asakusa - without spending more than 600yen on travel for the entire day (at most). The apartment itself is as advertised - convenient and tidy enough. Two of us stayed here comfortably for a week.
Ryo is a good host, who responded quickly and thoroughly to our questions and aided us with our trip nicely.
A few things to note. Firstly, the apartment only has one bedroom with A/C which isn’t a problem for two or three people as the beds can be easily moved, any more and you’re going to quickly run out of room. We were confused at both check-in and check-out: we found the place open and with the keys on the table which threw us for a loop but also shows how safe the neighbourhood is! It also seemed like we let in the next guests, who were waiting outside as we were packing our final bits. It wasn’t a problem just a very tight turnaround! Another minor but important point is that the place doesn’t have its own WiFi, only the limited pocket WiFi, but Ryo was gracious and allowed us to come and use his for major downloads or phone calls.
Overall this is a fantastic place to stay and we had a wonderful week using it as a base to stay. As first time travellers to Japan is certainly recommend it to you - especially if you’re intended to be out and about and want to return to a convenient, safe and quiet place!