Hotel New Palace

Breakfast was the highlight for me, with lots of different choices included. The rooms were clean and comfortable, and the hotel is close to the train station, which makes it a good place to rest after a full day of hiking. The ground floor feels a bit like an abandoned hotel when you first come in, though. Reception is on the 3rd floor.

The only real plus was being near Shingu Station. The room was uncomfortably hot all night, with no way to adjust the temperature, and the bathroom ledge was easy to trip over. There’s a motion-sensor ceiling light that came on even while I was lying in bed, so the room kept lighting up about every 10 seconds while I tried to sleep. The fridge didn’t work either, and we had to throw away all the food we’d put in it.

The NEW PALACE HOTEL was still very new when we stayed, and seemed like it might have been the best business hotel in Shingu. The facilities were better than we expected, and the staff were friendly and accommodating. It’s only a few minutes on foot from Shingu station, which was convenient in a small town with limited hotel choices. We were lucky to find it on our trip through the region, and would stay there again if we return to Shingu.

The room was bigger than you usually get at a Japanese business hotel, and the central location makes it easy to walk to Shingu station, castle hill, and the UNESCO-listed Kumano Hayatama Taisha shrine. You can sometimes hear the nearby railway line rumbling from the room. The lobby and reception feel sterile, and they’re hard to find because they aren’t on the ground floor and there are no directions in English. Staff speak no English, but they do pay attention to customers.