Hotel Sunshine

Breakfast was generous and really tasty. The room was clean too, with plenty of toiletries.

How do you book a room here?

The Japanese breakfast was pretty standard: rice, salad, and miso soup, all self-serve. In my room there was also a leaflet recommending a reproduction of the crab rice that used to be popular at the old Engaru Station. I was in a deluxe single, with enough floor space to open my suitcase. The TV looked small for such a roomy space, but the room itself was bright, clean, and well kept, even if the outside of the building seems a bit dated. The whole building is non-smoking. There are no smoking rooms, though there is a smoking room beside the first-floor front desk. Getting around is easy. Engaru Station is about five minutes on foot, the Kitami Bus Terminal is right outside, and a Coop supermarket is next door. Toriton, the well-known Hokkaido conveyor-belt sushi place, is roughly a ten-minute walk away. Its Sapporo and Tokyo locations get crowded, but here the wait was short, a bit of a hidden gem. It had been about ten years since I last stayed here, and I can’t recall much about that visit. This time, the brighter, cleaner feel stood out.

The staff were really courteous, and the rooms seem to have been renovated to a clean standard you might expect in a big city hotel. The outside still looks old, though there’s a large parking lot despite being right by the station. Hard to believe this is rated two stars.