Cheap and good hotel in Japan - Toyoko Inn

Toyoko Inn has a fabulous website that’s easy to use (multiple languages to choose from) which makes it easy to book/cancel rooms online, and they have a great cancellation policy. Just great for my very fluid itinerary as during my trip, I was still changing places to visit and hotels on the go.

There's no need to prepay or give them your credit card details on booking. The rooms are very clean. They provide a good enough breakfast, safe and nice environment.

The hotel is well located (Toyoko Inn hotels are often located close to train/subway stations) and they have a terrific child policy (child under 12 can stay for free and breakfast for free too).

The hotel website has a map of the hotel for us to print out conveniently. It has both the English map and Japanese map together in one page – brilliant! I printed out the map of all 12 Toyoko Inns we were going to stay at (before arrival in Japan), and it is better to have both the English map and Japanese map together – not much use showing a local the English map as they can’t read English much.

And the icing on the cake – Toyoko Inn gives you a free night for every ten you stay (one point for every night). You need to sign up as a member for 1,500Y (membership fee), but that’s just a one-time fee for life-time membership and your points never expire.

You can choose which night you wish to use your free night, so I always choose to use it for a night when the rate was higher. The free night is for a single room though, which is not a problem as I only need to top-up just 1000Y (S$17) extra for the free night for a double room. The main bulk of the cost of one hotel room - 6000Y – was taken care of by the free night given.

As our Japan holiday was for 28 days, we qualified for 2 free nights for the over 20 nights that we stayed with Toyoko Inn. Both my husband and I signed up as members, so he had a room under his name and I had one under mine. As we also planned 3 night trains in our itinerary, plus Toyoko Inn’s two free nights, we had effectively lobbed off 5 nights of accommodation costs.

IN addition, if you’re staying at a Toyoko Inn for more than one night, ask for the eco plan. That’s when they don’t make your room or change your towels. You get a 300Y discount on the second night (per room), and another 300Y discount for the third night on the eco plan. They do not extend it for the 4^th night though, as they do wanna clean your room by then. Hence, when I stayed five nights in Tokyo, and five nights in Kyoto, my 2^nd, 3^rd and 5^th night was on the eco plan.

It would have lightened our luggage if I did not pack pyjamas for all six of us. Toyoko Inns provide two sets of pyjamas per room, which we wore every night – to save on the laundry. If I had remembered that earlier I would only have needed to pack two sets of pyjamas (since we'd have a total of four hotel pyjamas with two rooms).

Oh yes – it’s affordable to do your laundry DIY at Toyoko Inn. Just have coins. To wash a 4.5kg load of clothes, it’s 300Y, and 100Y for a dry cycle. Soap powder is 30Y. Your clothes won’t be completely dry after one dry cycle. But we had brought a long length of string and strung that up in the hotel room. We draped the not-completely dry clothes on the string at bed time and when we woke up in the morning, the clothes were completely dry. Or you could always run the dry cycle twice or thrice if you prefer. In 28 days (4 weeks), I think we did the laundry three times, roughly once a week I guess. There was no need to do the laundry on the last week of our holiday since we’d be heading home and no longer needed fresh clothes for the following week.

I had read on the Net that Toyoko Inn provided shower foam and shampoo, so I did not pack any. The ones provided in the bathroom was okay, and I think they were Kao brand, as one of the Toyoko Inns I stayed at displayed the brand, while the others did not. They also provided conditioner for the hair. So this facility also helped me pack a little lighter.

Free internet access in all Toyoko Inn rooms was great – I had my netbook with me, and usually I would be reading the detailed and long version of my notes on what to do and see the next day, and checking the weather (do we bring our umbrellas out tomorrow? Do we need an extra layer of clothes depending on the temp & wind factor?), or using Jorudan/ Hyperdia to plan our train travel for next few days ahead. We also watched anime with the kids in our hotel room. There’s TV in all Toyoko Inn rooms, but everything’s in Japanese.

When we were travelling In Thailand, we'd have to buy litres 6 to 8 litres of bottled water to consume everyday. But here in Japan, Toyoko Inn provides a water dispenser at the lobby. Just remember to top up your water bottle everyday before you set out.

Of the 12 Toyoko Inns we stayed at, there were only three which did not have a room safe. Nonetheless, I kept my netbook zipped up in my backpack which did not have a lock. Our things were safe enough in the room, even at the ones which did not have a room safe. At the ones that did have a room safe, the safe was a standard size, and was always large enough to store my netbook when I’m out in the day exploring.

A few of the Toyoko Inns also provided curry rice supper. They call it supper and serve it at about 7pm, but to us it was dinner. There’s not much meat in the curry, so we usually buy some karage (fried chicken pieces), calamari or yakitori (grilled skewers of meat) from the supermarket to add on to make dinner more wholesome and complete. My 3 sons are carnivores and they growl a lot for meat at meal times. I usually also buy a bento or two from the supermart as well, as the quantity of the curry rice served is not enough for my teen boys’ voracious appetite – they really eat a lot.

These cold foods we buy from the supermart are always heated up in the microwave every Toyoko Inn has at the dining area, when they are serving piping hot curry rice. So everything is nice and warm to eat. I think we managed to have Toyoko Inn’s curry rice three times, and it was a great way to save on dinner for six, and still have a nice hot dinner with all the extra chicken and stuff we bought. Instead of a 5000Y dinner at a restaurant outside, we’d only spend less than 2000Y on these curry rice nights.

The strange thing we discovered is that the supermarts begin to mark down their takeaway foods at around 6 plus in the evening – which is just about the time we happen to buy these extra food to supplement the free curry rice served at 7pm at the hotel. Just ask the Toyoko Inn reception “Supaa wa doko desu ka.” And they’ll point you to some place walking distance from the hotel. Supermarkets are called supaa in Japan.

Before you think that I can speak Japanese, let me tell you that I can’t. At best I speak broken Japanese. I just learned some phrases, and practiced writing hiragana (and a bit of katakana) on my own before our Japan trip and it sure came in a little useful. I could read a little bit of menus written in hiragana, but anything in katakana I was quite hopeless at (that was because I learned hiragana first, before progressing to katakana – but ran out of time to familiarize myself well enough with katakana). The kanji part is not too bad as I know Mandarin.

Anyway, we saw some local people sticking close to a supermart staff who was putting labels on the pre-packed takeaway foods at the supermart. Turned out he was putting half-price stickers on them. So we picked the ones we like at half-price - karage, calamari, bentos, etc.

Toyoko Inn hotels give a female guest a welcome gift. At some Toyoko Inns I was shown three different types to pick one from. I always chose the same thing – the gift pack that had one of those wet paper masks for the face. Boy, do I need it what with the air being so drying. And I did use them at night in the hotel room. Just be aware that at some Toyoko Inn outlets, the staff do not bother to give you your gift. I think three quarters of the time when I checked into the 12 Toyoko Inns, the staff presented the ladies’ gift to me without prompting. As for the other quarter of the time, after they had handed the room keys to me (we booked two rooms), perhaps they forgot about the gift. I had to pause and ask if they had a ladies’ gift for me. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask on at least two occasions.

The policy of the ladies’ gifts also does not seem uniform. At two Toyoko Inns, I was given two ladies gifts. I don’t know why but perhaps the staff figured I had booked two rooms, or was it because I was staying two nights? But In Tokyo and Kyoto, where I stayed 5 nights each, I received only one set of ladies’ gift.

Guys – sorry, there are no gifts for you. Yup, my hubby did not get any gift though one of our two rooms was booked using his Toyoko Inn membership.

Well, no matter what, I do like this special ladies gift. Thank you, Toyoko Inn!

The breakfast at Toyko Inn is buffet style, and the variety and spread is rather inconsistent among the twelve branches we stayed with. At some Toyoko Inns, there was a good variety of breads while the worst Toyoko Inn (in terms of breakfast selection) we stayed at (I think this Toyoko Inn was in Asahikawa, Hokkaido) provided only plain white bread (thankfully with jam and butter provided), no eggs, no hotdogs, unremarkable miso soup, the de riguer onigiri and pickles, and an unappetizing salad. This was the most limited Toyoko Inn breakfast we encountered. I guess the other Toyoko Inns provided their guests with better breakfasts - one of the Toyoko Inns even had a remarkable selection of six types of side dishes, in addition to the traditional Japanese breakfast and breads. I remember the lotus stem (braised in dashi) side dish and the braised egg plant side dish the best as they were fabulous and my favourite of the six.

There is always traditional Japanese breakfast provided - afterall Toyoko Inn's core customer base are Japanese business travellers. We had miso soup at every breakfast which is wonderful! The miso soup varied from one Toyoko Inn to another - some had strips of sweet beancurd, some had pork and vegetables, some had wakame, some had onions and cabbage, some had daikon in it.

There's always ocha, tea and coffee. Some Toyoko Inns provided thermos flasks of coffee, but we really like the Toyoko Inns that provided coffee machines where you press buttons and get to select, at times, not just usual coffee but a choice of espresso, cappucino, or American coffee.

I’ll post the list of the twelve Toyoko Inns we stayed at and my impression of them soon. And our 28-day itinerary as well, and talk about the places we went to.