{"id":31528,"date":"2019-12-29T22:34:12","date_gmt":"2019-12-29T14:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=31528"},"modified":"2026-03-14T13:49:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T05:49:33","slug":"15-days-in-kanagawa-hokkaido-vessel-inn-sapporo-nakajima-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2019\/12\/29\/15-days-in-kanagawa-hokkaido-vessel-inn-sapporo-nakajima-park\/","title":{"rendered":"15 Days in Kanagawa & Hokkaido \u2013 Vessel Inn Sapporo Nakajima Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

We stayed at the Vessel Inn Sapporo Nakajima Park for seven nights: not the longest we\u2019ve ever spent in a single property – the record belongs to our eight-night stay at Pegasus Apart\u2019Hotel<\/a> in Melbourne 2016 – but it\u2019s close! The short version of this stay: good location with a caveat, room styling is ordinary, and size is a little squeezy. It\u2019s not the best property in an equivalent Japanese city I\u2019ve stayed at before at the same price range, but on the overall the stay was satisfactory. This will be quite a long review that\u2019s past my usual commentary length for properties I stay in, and it\u2019s on account that this Vessel Inn is very highly rated on Tripadvisor and I wanted to be fair in my assessment whether it lives up to that claim.<\/p>\n

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Rated #1 in fact. Don’t play-play!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Comments!<\/p>\n

We\u2019d initially booked in for a six-night stay. But after we dropped our Niseko segment, we applied for an extension of an additional night (the other spare night was going to Hakodate). Oddly, we were unable to use the booking website – Agoda in this case – to directly make amendments to dates, so we had to get Agoda\u2019s customer service assistance for that. Of the two properties, Hotel Smile Hakodate readily permitted the extension with no fuss and at the same rate, but not Vessel Inn (Sapporo Nakajima Park). The latter requested a substantially higher rate for the last night. One would have hoped that given the already long stay we\u2019d committed to, the hotel would permit the extension at the same rate as goodwill, but nope they would not.<\/p>\n

The hotel is very close to the local subway station<\/strong> – its namesake station in fact: Nakajima Park Station – and it\u2019s less than a minute\u2019s walk away. Pro-tip too: enter and exit the station via entrance #2: it’s literally just behind the hotel. The hotel’s super close proximity to the train station is a huge plus: this station also doesn\u2019t see a lot of commuters getting off and on board. However, it also means that if you\u2019re heading towards Sapporo Station each morning for your day\u2019s itinerary, you\u2019d be squeezing in with everybody else heading to work in that direction, with Odori Park and Sapporo Station themselves being where the lines cross.<\/p>\n

There are just a small handful of restaurants<\/strong> in the immediate vicinity of the hotel: an Italian restaurant, three ramen joints (or so) – and that\u2019s it. The large numbers of dining establishments are all clustered from the Susukino area onwards, and that involves at least six minutes of walking. Most seriously: be prepared to eat the daily subway fare between Nakajima Park and Sapporo Station. For the four of us, it cost us \u00a5<\/span>1,200\/SGD15 for a round trip just to make our way to find dinner at some decent places in Sapporo Station and back. This kind of cost really adds up fast to your transportation expenses.<\/p>\n

The other option when it comes to makan<\/strong> is just to take out ready-made food. If that\u2019s an option for you, then you\u2019d be relieved to know that there are three convenience stores all within 1\u20132 minutes\u2019 walk of the hotel. Two Lawsons are directly in front of you when you exit the hotel: across the road, one on your left and the other on your right. And if you want a bit more variety, there\u2019s a Seicomart convenience store on the side of the hotel just another minute\u2019s walk further down.<\/p>\n

Nakajima Park also seems home to a large number of mid-priced hotels<\/strong>: I didn\u2019t do a hard count, but I reckon there are perhaps six all clustered together and eyeballing each other, including some that look a lot smaller than Vessel Inn, and one at least – Sapporo Park Hotel – which looked huge and grand.<\/p>\n

What was most interesting to me was Vessel Inn\u2019s very high Tripadvisor<\/strong> rating. I reckon the #1 rating in fact played no small part in elevating my expectations of the rooms, amenities and also dining. The actual experience was quite mixed: the room – a Double – was small – but we could accept that since there were four of us in it. But the decor and styling are something else: it was bland<\/strong> with little attempt at cheering the place up, whether it\u2019s in terms of aesthetic carpentry and woodwork, or even the colour palette. I guess if you\u2019re just doing a short stay, this wouldn\u2019t matter much – but it did for me for a seven-night stay.<\/p>\n

Sleep quality<\/strong> was OK, but nothing fantastic. The pillow is of an unusual design, and its internals comprise two different types of filler material, thus supporting different sleeping postures.<\/p>\n

Of amenities<\/strong>: there was a fairly large flat-screen TV – 50\u201d is my guess – with a large number of cable channels, but nothing international. So, either you learn Japanese if you want to be entertained with what\u2019s on the telly, or you look elsewhere to bide your nights away. There oddly weren\u2019t any built-in USB charging ports in the room – something I\u2019ve come to expect in Japanese hotels as two of the four properties I stayed in during the September trip had them in the rooms. The most well-used amenity for us though was the complimentary beverage corner<\/strong> on the ground floor – operating hours are 2PM to 11PM every day – and we really availed ourselves of that. The wife for instance would make 2\u20133 coffee runs every evening just to get her fix haha.<\/p>\n

In-room Internet<\/strong> is a little iffy. The four devices – two handphones, one tablet and one laptop – were able to connect to WIFI easily enough, but there were occasional disconnects and also frequent slowdowns. When it did work, it was speedy – enough at least for me to upload the close to about 25GB average of 4K video every evening to YouTube.<\/p>\n

Unlike Hotel Mystays Haneda<\/a> which is an \u2018eco\u2019 hotel i.e. it cuts down on housekeeping and default laundry replacement arrangements, there\u2019s housekeeping<\/strong> every day at Vessel Inn. I observed though that the housekeepers routinely did not touch i.e. tidy up personal effects, whether it\u2019s apparel, cables used for electronic gadgets, or the toiletries we brought over from Singapore for use on the trip. No, I wasn\u2019t expecting our personal items to be tidied up – but I wanted to point out that in some properties we\u2019ve stayed in, housekeeping will do so. This hotel doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an in-hotel laundromat<\/strong>, with separate machines for washers and dryers. They are coin-operated and not on the house, unlike Hotel Mystays Haneda. These machines also seem to be quite heavily used, so I advise giving yourself that bit of time allowance if you have urgent stuff to wash.<\/p>\n

And finally, the much talked about buffet breakfast<\/strong> that many, many<\/em><\/strong> Tripadvisors rave about. The good bits: there is a decent range, so if you\u2019re one of those eaters who want little bits of every item type, the breakfast buffet spread won\u2019t disappoint you. If you\u2019re hoping for one or two signature items for your palate though, you might not find them. The food items were alright, but – aside from a pot of beef stew which was quite good but it only showed up on one of the seven days we had breakfast – I was hard pressed to find any standout item in the spread. The hours of operation are from 6:30AM to 9:30AM every morning: kinda late especially for winter and its shorter days. The other Japanese hotels I visited started their breakfast usually at 6AM if not earlier. On the other hand, there\u2019s more than sufficient seating capacity, and tables get cleared and readied again speedily.<\/p>\n

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Vessel Inn Sapporo Nakajima Park.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The very welcomed complimentary beverage corner.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Two double beds for the four of us.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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TV console area with a small writing area for laptops and the like.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Decent breakfast spread in the buffet.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Bread and pastries at breakfast buffet.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Vessel Inn Sapporo Nakajima Park, and a small bakery beside it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, in all, my summary feel of this property and is it deserving of its ranking on Tripadvisor? That\u2019s the problematic part for me, and I don\u2019t think it is. Vessel Inn Sapporo Nakajima Park is good – just not great, and a property that sits at the top of Tripadvisor traveler ratings really needs to be even better than this. Though then again, if you care nothing about ratings and want only a comfortable stay, then this place is still worth checking out. It\u2019s decent and alright, good access to the subway with the larger caveat of it being four stops from the city centre, and finally supported by a sumptuous but not particularly fantastic breakfast.<\/p>\n

My review of Hotel Smile Hakodate<\/a> next!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We stayed at the Vessel Inn Sapporo Nakajima Park for seven nights: not the longest we\u2019ve ever spent in a single property – the record belongs to our eight-night stay at Pegasus Apart\u2019Hotel in Melbourne 2016 – but it\u2019s close!<\/p>\n

Read More 15 Days in Kanagawa & Hokkaido \u2013 Vessel Inn Sapporo Nakajima Park<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31825,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[662],"class_list":["post-31528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-traveling","tag-kanagawa-hokkaido-japan-2019","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/blog-2019-japan-kanagawa-hokkaido-day-07-A7_03631-sapporo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38412,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31528\/revisions\/38412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}