City Garden Hotel Shinanoji

The friendly, helpful staff made the whole visit a great experience. We chose a full Japanese-style room, which was comfortable and suited the hotel’s Japanese feel. It’s got a good kind of retro atmosphere, and it’s very clean, not shabby at all. If you’re from Europe, breakfast might seem pretty odd, but it’s definitely worth trying. The hotel is about a five-minute walk from the station and city center.

The building has a Chocozap franchise, and hotel guests can use its gym for free, even though that perk wasn’t advertised when we stayed in January 2025. It seems mainly intended for members. You have to ask reception, fill out a form with your room number, length of stay, name, and age, then they give you a paper QR code for entering and leaving the area. I only asked about and used the gym, though there are also washing machines and dryers, karaoke rooms, and self-serve beauty treatment rooms. The gym has machines but no free weights: several bikes and treadmills, one Pilates machine, two leg presses, two seated chest presses, two shoulder presses, one pull-down, one bicep curl, one leg adductor, one dip machine, maybe one or two more, and a few stretching mats. We booked a Japanese-style room with futons on tatami because that was the only way to fit our family of five. There are western-style rooms too. The room was a good size for five, including older kids, but the futons were thinner than ones we’d had elsewhere and felt tough on our western-mattress-used bodies. We had to get creative with extra padding. The hotel is a 10-minute walk west of the main train station, quite close to the main bus terminal. There isn’t much happening in that part of Nagano, but the walk was fine, and a 7/11 is nearby. Reception staff had limited English, but were very friendly and used a phone to translate.

We asked the front desk how to reach the snow monkey tourist attraction, and they came back with a complete guide explaining how to get there. A great place to stay, with Japanese hospitality at its best.

Spacious, clean rooms, friendly staff, and wonderful breakfasts. The hospitality is great.