Hakkoda Hotel

I was relieved to leave. This was my worst stay in Japan, even compared with airport hotels, and it felt like a disaster and a waste of time. The building looked as if it hadn’t been refurbished in its 34 years. My bed was hard as concrete, the bathroom took me back to Soviet-era Russia, and the room smelled like a horse stable when I first walked in. The whole stay was torturous. Coming from the airport, a taxi seemed to be the only option, and sometimes the road closes. Service was far below Japanese standards. Staff weren’t warm to foreigners, and I felt discriminated against. Some walked past without greeting me, which is unusual in Japan. Food was another major disappointment. The French dinner was average at best, while the Japanese-style breakfast was the worst I’ve had in my life, with pitiful variety and everything tasting dreadful. The Japanese dinner was painfully average, even worse than the French one. Presentation and taste were both below standard, and that restaurant was less comfortable than the other. Western breakfast wasn’t much better, and the coffee always tasted strange. I was told the only hotel restaurant serving lunch stopped taking reservations at 5pm the day before. I checked in before 5pm and was staying two nights, but nobody told me. The alternative was a cafeteria serving soba with lots of tourists, which I didn’t want to visit. During breakfast I later asked for a lunch table and they agreed, but when I arrived the restaurant was mostly empty. They didn’t seem to want customers. The room had plenty of problems too. I could clearly hear people talking in the hallway. There was nowhere comfortable to sit except the bed. The chairs were very hard and slid easily on the carpet. The room kept feeling hot, and no pajamas were provided, even though that’s the norm in Japan. I also felt uncomfortable when I returned from lunch and saw people who clearly didn’t look like hotel guests, foreign backpackers, sitting in the lobby. I was annoyed that nobody had asked them to leave. There wasn’t an outdoor onsen, only a sad indoor one. An outdoor hot spring in the snow would have made it so much better.