Business In Ichiraku

It feels a little old, but you can rent bicycles. There’s a treadmill and massage chair on the first floor, plus a large bath with a sauna on the sixth. Each floor has a microwave, and there’s a toaster on the first floor. With Seven and Harrows nearby for groceries, it seems like a good base where you could live comfortably for a year or two.

This feels like a regular place for working people, and there are hardly any tourists. There isn’t much around, but the hotel and rooms are clean and comfortable. The men’s public bath and coin laundry are useful. The one downside is that the dryer takes a long time to dry things.

The cafeteria has the kind of atmosphere you get at a training camp, which I liked. I was here during Golden Week on a motorcycle tour, and the single room had plenty of space. The TV was large, though wall-mounted and impossible to turn around. There was room to park a motorcycle under cover in front of the entrance, but it was small. The covered parking for two cars looked awkward to get in and out of; I’d rather see the whole area used for bicycle parking. Bicycles are available to rent, but they seemed like the sort you can buy at a hardware store for 10,000 yen. I couldn’t figure out how they’d gotten into such poor condition, and the pedals were unusually heavy. I checked Google Maps for a nearby 7-Eleven, went there, and found it was actually a supermarket. It wasn’t a convenience store since it stayed open late, but it was fine.

The room had a smart TV and a refrigerator that was already cold, and the only thing I wished I’d had was a shoehorn. The single room was spacious, and I appreciated being allowed to use it. I found the place on Yahoo! the day before an October three-day weekend while on a motorcycle trip. The hotel itself was fine, but I felt unlucky with the other guests. At the large public bath, another guest seemed to be using a smartphone after he came in. He kept glancing my way, so I told him to stop. He silently put it down and carried on bathing. I thought it was intrusive and reported it to the front desk as soon as I left. I still wonder what happened to that creepy, pale-skinned voyeur. The laundry room is spacious, with about ten machines. A group of mothers accompanying girls on a basketball or volleyball team were talking loudly and hanging the players’ uniforms over the machine I was using. They left the door open despite a sign asking people to keep it shut to keep bugs out, and hung the clothes where they got in other guests’ way. For bike parking, there’s a roofed area for two or three motorcycles visible from the national highway. There’s also covered bicycle parking behind the building on the prefectural road side, which I really appreciated. There don’t seem to be many convenience stores or restaurants within walking distance, but Hello's, a major supermarket, is less than a kilometer away, so it should be fine.