My partner and I hated it here.
1. The sheets were cheap and uncomfortable.
2. The bed was small for 2 people. The blanket was smaller, so we ended up tugging at it. The pillows were insubstantial.
3. The shower area was very tiny.
4. The toilet closet (for lack of a better word) was tinier. If you’re tall and lean forward when you’re on the pot, you can’t close the door. I hope you’re travelling solo or your partner is ok with an open door.
5. The buttons on the water heating mechanism were obviously in Japanese and the English instructions are inadequate. If you can read Japanese, great. If you can’t, press the buttons randomly and hope for the best. My partner lucked out. I didn’t, and showered in cold water.
6. No space to move if you have two suitcases open. These two suitcases took up literally all the floor space. So only one of us could have a suitcase open at any given time.
7. I hope you don’t get claustrophobic because the windows are frosted (god, why!!) and they can’t be opened. Need fresh air? Look elsewhere.
8. No elevator, so you need to carry your luggage up and down two flights of stairs.
9. Check in at 4pm but check out at 11am sharp. You’re probably thinking, ok I’ll leave my luggage there and pick it up later. Think again. The host refuses to allow that and asks that you put it in a locker in the station. I hope you get lucky finding such a locker because when we looked in Iidabashi all the large lockers were taken. We ended up lugging our suitcases all over Tokyo on the last day of our trip.
What’s really terrible is that I paid a lot of money for this matchbox (£130 per night). It’d be reasonable to think that for that much money you’d get a decent place to stay. You don’t. Please stay elsewhere, at a hotel or a hostel.
I really hope the host rethinks some of what he’s doing because this experience ruined an otherwise amazing trip for us.