I stayed in two hotels during this Tokyo-Kisarazu trip. The first was in Tokyo for two nights, at the APA Hotel Ginza Kyobashi Minami, located at Tarakacho Station. This has been the third APA hotel I’ve stayed in, and it’s set up pretty much in the same way as the earlier two: rooms are tiny, but the hotel is clean, modern, and has all the amenities covered. Importantly, it was right where the train station was and within walking distance of Tokyo Station.
The second hotel was the Kisarazu Washington Hotel, where I stayed for five nights, and thus warrants a post. Comments!
The hotel is located less than 100m from Kisarazu Station and can be seen as my train arrived from Chiba on Saturday afternoon. Kisarazu Station itself isn’t particularly exciting – the general area, in fact, is relatively lifeless apart from the usual bustling during morning and evening peak hours when locals, especially high school students, take trains from Kisarazu Station to places where they need to be. There is a lift that brings passengers from the train ticketing entrances to the ground floor, so you’ll want to avail yourself of that if you’re hauling heavy luggage. There are also two Family Marts within easy walking distance of the hotel: one right opposite it, and another about 60-70 metres away.
The hotel itself is modern. The reception is on Level 3 and accessed by a lift, with rooms located from Level 4 onwards. The Double room non-smoking I was given was allocated on the fourth floor. Like many Japanese hotels, rooms offer the normal suite of toiletries, and you can take more from the amenities corner in front of reception, so you needn’t bring your own.
The room itself, at 22 sqm, is significantly larger than APA Hotel’s tiny 10-11 sqm rooms, and offered separate stalls for the toilet and bathing, a queen-sized bed, a single-seat sofa, and a large-screen TV mounted on a TV console area. The room is very clean, like typical business hotels in the country. Room cleaning is offered daily whether you ask for it or not, unless you put the no-cleaning sign outside the door.
Breakfast is served at a mid-sized restaurant on Level 2. I really liked the restaurant: the full-height window panes permitted the morning sunlight to come in, making for a brightly lit and chirpy setting to have morning grub. The range itself was pretty good: the fare was Japanese-type, but items were generally well-prepared and tasty. One thing though: I had daily breakfasts at the hotel restaurant every morning, and never once did I observe changes in the daily BF menu. By the time I got to the third morning, I was only eating just to get past BF!
One caution too: the hotel specifically warns about the possibility of breakfast crowds. So, BF started earlier at 6:30AM instead of the usual 7AM.
There is also a small laundromat on Level 3 that is equipped with ice machines, as well as coin-operated laundry machines and dryers. These are separate machines, with 400 yen for wash cycles, and 100 yen for every 15 minutes of dryer use.
Dining options immediately around the hotel and Kisarazu Station are pretty limited: there’s a Yoshinoya beside the train station, and a handful of local eateries that I didn’t try out. Aside from the three convenience stores – two Family Marts around the train station, and another, a Daily Yamazaki, at the nearby Sparkle City mini-mall – there is no other serious department-store-style retail or supermarket. Thankfully, APita Power supermarket (a large two-floor supermarket that has everything you’d need, including apparel, shoes, and bags) is one stop away at Kimitsu train station, and there is a small mall with a supermarket, pharmacy, 100-yen store, and also Saizeriya a little further away at Sodegaura Station, which is two stops away in the other direction along the Uchibo Line.
All in, I liked my stay at the Kisarazu Washington Hotel: the room was clean, had all the amenities I needed, and the BF offered a reasonably good range (though I got tired of it fast). The only thing to be mindful of is that you’d need to take a train if you need a supermarket or some sort of retail therapy. Still, I recommend this hotel if you need to be in the vicinity!