Ikaruga Hotel(いかるがホテル)

Why are there so many reviews for this same place? The room-only price of 5,400 yen might sound low, and parking was free, but the building and service were a problem. The brown shop next to the convenience store is just the reception, run by the elderly owners. It feels like an old drive-in that’s been left to decay. The man immediately asked for 5,400 yen and hurried to take us to the room without matching our pace. Our room was down the stairs to the right, in a white two-story building. There was another room upstairs, reached by a steep staircase. With two people up there, it felt like a separate room. Really, it’s one room in a two-room apartment, with a shared kitchen, toilet, and shower. Each room is about eight tatami mats. The walls are thin enough to hear your colleague next door. We had metal chairs and what looked like a folding metal bed. The towels were too worn for me to want to use, and the toothbrush already had toothpaste on its bristles. The TV was small, and I couldn’t tell whether the sound I heard was coming from ours or the neighbors’ TV. The air conditioner looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years, though it worked well. I wouldn’t recommend this place to people new to this kind of lodging or anyone who gets very worried about germs.

It’s near JR Yamato-Koizumi Station, along the Tomio River, and has the look of a business hotel. But the building is badly run down, and both inside and out it’s so dim that I wondered whether anyone actually stays there. The guest reviews aren’t good either. I’d choose somewhere else, like Sun Hotel or Super Hotel.

The sheets were clean, and the room was roomy, but the bathroom felt like one from an old men’s dorm. I arrived in the middle of the night and was taken aback. The whole place has a Showa-era apartment feel, a bit like Masashi Sada (lol). It might be a tough fit for young people these days. Backpackers could manage, but at 4,200-5,400 yen for a single room, I probably wouldn’t come back.

I saw the older man who seemed to own the place throwing trash into the river out front. A river isn’t a garbage can! Maybe your hotel is the garbage can?! Don’t call somewhere like this a hotel. It’s worse than a sleazy red-light district in Nishinari!