Hotel Ginza Daiei

Was searching for reasonably-priced room and found a goldmine in Ginza Daiei. The location is great, right in the heart of Ginza, sits on a quiet side street off a main thoroughfare. It is only 3min walk to Higashi-Ginza subway station which has great connections to the rest of Tokyo. The hotel is a discreet, old building that could be mistaken for any office block in the Ginza area. True that the lobby is small and dated, no seating, purely functional but look deeper - the staff at the counter are professional, try their utmost to help and the noticeboard is filled with tips, maps and restaurant/attractions recommendations. All this points to staff who really are interested in giving their guests a good experience in Tokyo. The hotel offers more expensive, newly refurbished designer rooms but we settled for the standard ones which were really good enough. I won't comment on room size since this is Tokyo and all rooms are smallish. But the beds are comfortable enough and the space cosy enough for a nice retreat after a day of hard sight-seeing. This is a no-frills business hotel with no breakfast option, but as with most Japanese hotels, it is very clean, comes with amenities including sleepwear. If a hotel had a personality, this would be a stiff elderly gentleman who earnestly and politely tries his best to help. Nothing flashy, just good comfortable value in the heart of Ginza. We booked through the hotel website but paid cash on arrival and got a 5% discount off for using cash. Overall, prices are lower and more reasonable than many other hotels in Ginza.

We were meeting with friends and they wanted to stay in Ginza. I didn't realise that it's the trendy part of town, but it would explain why this was the only place I could find that was affordable. It was fine, as we weren't there to stay in a hotel room, but boy, space was sure at a premium. You could even see the discolouration of the paint near the bed where people had to push against the wall to get past the bed! It was however in a very central part of Ginza with heaps of restaurants nearby. It was however VERY hard to find a bar. We ended up in a ritzy rum bar, which I quite liked, but my mate just wanted a beer, and we could only do that in a restaurant (or a nightclub we somehow found ourselves in at 3am, but that's a story for another time!)

It is a bit old, but it easy to get metro station and walk to Ginza and Tsukiji Market. All in all it's good. However, if you are not good at going up and down the stairs, be aware of that there are stairs in front of the entrance and on the way to take the elevator in the lobby.